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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 



JOHN DAVIDSON 

A STUDY OF THE RELATION OF HIS 
IDEAS TO HIS POETRY 



BY 

HAYIM FINEMAN 



A THESIS 

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School 

IN Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 

FOR the Degree of Doctor 

of Philosophy 



PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
1916 



\ 



UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 

JOHN DAVIDSON 

A STUDY OF THE RELATION OF HIS 
IDEAS TO HIS POETRY 



BY 

HAYIM FINEMAN 



A THESIS 

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School 

IN Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements 

for the Degree of Doctor 

of Philosophy 



PHILADELPHIA, PA, 
1916 



< 



Press of 

The New era printing Company 

lancaster. pa, 



John David^a is one of a group o£ poets who began to attract 

vailed 11 ^'^^""^ I ^11 raised under the influence of 

™ta:^^tnitarlnL and Arnold's anti-philistinism and 
diskd intensely what they conceived to he the mid-Vietonan type. 
The tidVietorL was to them a wlgar bou.geois-a nar^w^ 
winded, complacent, practical individual who edified " ''y 
reading poetry and was shocked by the indecencies of Ibsen Wag 
ler and Zoa' a person whose philosopher was Spencer because 
SpenTer was so industriously careful ; whose great -telleetual novd- 
W was Thackeray because his eharacters reminded one of the com 
moITace people that one might have met yesterday; whose great 
poTwas Tennyson because he was abreast of tie times and always 
comnromised • whose essayist was Macaulay because he was an op i- 
miTwhTwi ved that a ''praetieal" millennium was at hand; who 
rreatld a Shakespeare in his own image, "bland, gentle, amiable 
a hea rical man of bourgeois tastes prudently amassing a fortune 
and ret ng to the country to live on his income ; who tinkered with 
cornTaw reforms and model prisons because he was too timid to re- 
model society ; whose tragedy was of f\^--\''r''ZTimI^^- 
religion was eompromisingly rational; his phdosophy uti itarian , 
h pontics liberal ; his manners pr„dish-an old maid, stolid, seri- 
;'sentimental, provincial. It was a duty to discuss sex problems 
fre ly and shock this ™lgar prude with epigrams and poses and 
wTth the selecting of degenerates for heroes in nove s. Strange sins 
and subtle moods were accordingly created largely as a reaction 
against the matter-of-fact moralizings of the mid-Vietorians. ^ 

The social and economical conditions in the eighteen nineties 



2 • JOHN DAVIDSON 

were especially ripe for this anti- Victorian movement. There were, 
indeed, no new factors that had been previously inoperative; but 
conditions hitherto merely generally effective, now became more 
pronounced. The close of the century thus marked a more com- 
plete triumph, politically and even socially, of the upper wealthier 
elements of the middle classes. This brought about within the minds 
of the younger generation a more thorough down-breaking of class 
distinctions. The aristocracy in England, whose social position as a 
class had been steadily undermined throughout the nineteenth cen- 
tury by intermarriage with wealth, English and American, was 
now visibly losing in prestige and was looked up to less and less by 
the younger generation. Youths who belonged to the middle class 
no longer aspired to become successful bourgeois. They looked with 
contempt at their own class which had lost its class traditions, and 
at the aristocracy which was beginning more and more to resemble 
in all outward circumstances the wealthy bourgeois. The very word 
bourgeois began to be looked upon as a term of insult. Moreover 
the diffusion of education of a superficial kind likewise increased 
the rapidity of this dissolution of class ideals and intensified a gen- 
eral feeling of discontent. The new youth was thus prepared for 
all kinds of new movements in any way suggesting rebellion against 
the past. He found especially irritating the respect for the pro- 
prieties and the lack of daring in Victorian English life and fre- 
quently escaped his bourgeois surroundings by cultivating an in- 
tellectually aristocratic attitude. From an ivory tower the new aris- 
tocrat could look down with contempt on the stupidities of man- 
kind, and was enabled in his solitary contemplations to violate 
mentally in a few epigrams all the moral laws men accept. In such 
environment a misapprehension of JBstheticism, mysticism, and 
Baudelairism could flourish and have a crowd of admirers. Politi- 
cally the completion of the triumph of the money element among 
the bourgeois was likewise productive of important changes. The 
exploitation of English capital in India and Africa fired the imagi- 
nation of many; and made distasteful the ''sober-suited freedom" 
of a Tennyson. England began to be thought of as mistress of the 
world with numerous sons encompassing the earth in Canada, India, 
Africa, Australia ; Englishmen all, who had hived off and acquired 
new lands by taking up the white man's burden — hewing down for- 



JOHN DAVIDSON 3 

ests, building factories, exploiting and civilizing. Imperialist 
poetry in which England v^as conceived as the savior of mankind 
and the forlorn hope of the world accordingly began to be written. 
Economically, with the triumph of the capitalist element among 
the bourgeois, and with the increase of the unemployed, a class con- 
scious proletariat developed and with it came socialism and the 
writers on socialism. The social remedies of Carlyle and Ruskin, 
and the tinkerings of liberal Victorian statesmen with factory laws 
became now, in the eyes of a growing element, short-sighted affairs 
and objects of derision. Moreover the internationalism of the social- 
ists on the one hand, and the increasing intimacy of political rela- 
tions with France on the other hand, made impossible the provin- 
cialism of a Tennyson. Finally, the continuous increase in the use 
of machinery and electricity, accompanied by an augmented knowl- 
edge of the nature of social evils, scotched the make-believe roman- 
ticism of the Idylls of the King, that was largely an outgrowth of a 
faint-hearted attempt at avoiding life. Realism became a domi- 
nating mode in fiction and drama; and the romanticism that sur- 
vived began to have for this new generation a scientific or exact 
coloring. It either became symbolism, and this appealed to an age 
of increased intensity of commercial production because of the 
nerve-irritation that symbolic methods of double interpretation and 
aroused expectancy involved and implied; or else it became the 
romance of cruelty and tragic endings with occasional by-products 
of Wellsian science-romances and Davidsonian cosmological testa- 
ments. 

As is evident from this rapid survey, a rebellion against Vic- 
torian taste was inevitable. The rebellion that did take place was, 
however, far from powerful. No really great creative poet appeared 
in the nineties. Not much more than a few subtle moods, and sev- 
eral epigrams and a tendency toward braver habits of thought, were 
actually produced. The poets were afraid or incapable of sus- 
tained effort and were, in the main, amateurs. As a result, notwith- 
standing the healthiness of their revolt, they failed to create any- 
thing as burly as the works of Carlyle or Dickens. They became 
merely rebels who played with revolution and half the time did 
not know what they wanted. Wlien they began to know, they were 
swamped by influences from the continent, where a similar rebellion 



4 JOHN DAVIDSON 

wtis going on against the taste of tlie early mid-nineteenth century. 
Baudelaire, Ibsen, the French realists, mystics and symbolists be- 
came the great sources of inspiration; whence the derived quality 
of the poetry and prose of the period. This failure to produce a 
great literature should not blind us however to the fact that the 
English poets of the nineties accomplished a useful task: they cer- 
tainly cleared the atmosphere of the prudishness, the insularity and 
the lack of courage of the Victorian period, though such a sweeping 
was necessarily accompanied by a histrionic assertiveness and a 
somewhat exaggerated sense of self-importance on the part of its 
authors. 

John Davidson was one of a small number of independent minds 
of that period who had something to say on a grand scale. He had 
much in common with his contemporaries. He wrote empire verse 
and poems of London streets and poverty much in their manner. 
He participated in, and helped to determine, the direction of the 
'rebellion against Victorianism. Intoxicated by ideas new to him 
and engaged in rebellion against the past, his own importance grew 
on him and his productions contain a swagger somewhat repelling. 
Similarly liis conception of the Englishman as the Overman is a 
product of the imperialistic tendencies in the midst of which he 
lived. These are, however, mere perturbing details which serve to 
fix the period in which he worked. They do not make his writings 
any the less originally creative ; for he had a point of view and a 
depth of emotion altogether his own: he tried to stem the tide of 
French influence and endeavored to construct a new basis for Eng- 
lish poetry. Out of his own experience and the scientific thought 
of his own time he attempted to create "a new dwelling place for 
the human imagination." This he did with a passion and energy 
in the presence of which the writings of most of his contemporaries 
pale. Suspended in majestic agony his poetry rises across the firma- 
ment of the early twentieth century. It is titanic in conception. 
It is largely a poetry of liberation inspired by the desire to destroy 
all illusions that he thought animated the past; for nothing short 
of infinity would satisfy his imagination. "Whether the poetry so 
created was really new, or the philosophy on which it is based was 
true, is open to question. There can be no doubt, however, that such 
assumptions on the part of Davidson brought out the best in him 
and gave his work a grandeur and intensity that is impressive. 



II 

The elements in Davidson's work that individualize and distin- 
guish it from other poetry are in evidence even in his earliest pro- 
ductions, Davidson in Scotland is, as yet, not a materialistic 
thinker; but the qualities that his early poems display are symp- 
tomatic of his later development. His nature poems are thus neither 
decorative nor precieux. They are the kind that would be com- 
posed by a poet who frankly adored woods firmly rooted in the turf 
for their own sake because they gave him simple pleasure rather 
than because they suggested to him a human mood or a pretty 
image. His rural scenes are hills with budding heather rising like 
"purple domes"; leas of throbbing color, and stretches of country 
in which daws are "tossing themselves into the air."^ The ma- 
terialistic quality in such scenes is the result largely of his not at- 
tempting to interpret spiritually the things he describes.- Land- 
scapes are to him patches of gay color, and arouse within him no 
reflections beyond the expression of the physical pleasure of being 
out in the open. His love poetry is material in the same manner. 
Lovers awake in the morning and go out for a pleasant summer 
day in the woodlands ; they sing and bathe ; they dine in an arbor, 
gather rosebuds and berries, listen to the larks and wonder at the 
blueness of the sky ; then night comes and they retire.^ Back of all 
this there is no wistfulness or even intensity of passion. Love is 
conceived by Davidson externally and is to him a Cytherean Aphro- 
dite "all one blush and glance of passion"; fruitful, material, cos- 

i/n a Music Ball: "Kennoul Hill," p. 94; '*0n a Hill Top," p. 88; "A 
May Morning, ' ' p. 77, etc. 

2 Vide conclusion of " AWood in Autumn" {Hid., p. 65) : 

"Whether they mourned their tarnished ragged dress, 
Or comrades fallen before the woodman's axe 

I know not; only this, I heard them sing." 

3 "For Lovers" {iUd., pp. 69-76). 



6 JOHN DAVIDSON 

mic. Anselm and Bianca die in the martyrdom of love ;* the Queen 
of Thule kills and is slain for love 's sake f but all this happens un- 
affectedly without any mouthings of passion or the expression of 
poignant pain. Love is to the poet a process the effects of which 
are to be studied objectively,^ 

The dramas composed in Scotland are similarly symptomatic of 
his later growth. In the main they are all frankly plays full of 
word rivalries and midsummer-night fantasies. They are the prod- 
uct of a mind overflowing with energy and rejoicing in the con- 
sciousness of its powers and they have all the freshness and daring 
of adolescence. Their frolicsomeness and fantasy contain, however, 
no spirituality. The fairies in An Unhistorical Pastoral as well 
as Bacchus and Ariadne in Scaramouch in Naxos are of this earth ; 
they are not woven of finer stuff than some of the mortals they 
mingle with. The emotions portrayed are genuine enough but there 
are no magic casements in the plays and the youthful lovers have 
no fine frenzies. There is, instead, a deftness of wit, a nimbleness 
of fancy and a certain burliness to be met in his love and nature 
poems. This absence of spirituality is again accompanied by a cer- 
tain metaphysical quality. Whole plays are written as if to demon- 
strate that ''there is no life at all, but love."^ It is this meta- 
physical attitude that perhaps partly accounts for Davidson's 
unsuccessful character drawing in his plays and novels ; for David- 
son is really interested in general principles rather than in indi- 
viduals. Cinthio and Rupert are accordingly made to vie with each 
" other in the praise of their respective mistresses; Ringan Dean 
bursts out with the lyrical "Where have you, been to-day Annie 
Smith?"; but neither lovers nor mistresses become individualized 
human beings. Even in Scaramouch in Naxos, Davidson's greatest 
dramatic achievement, the effectiveness depends on the capricious- 
ness of fancy, and on the satire on human grossness in the mass 
rather than on any successful character creation. 

Davidson displays however in these dramas at most only a meta- 
physical attitude rather than any distinct philosophy of life ; for in 

4 "Anselm and Bianca" (ibid., pp. 36-44). 

5 "The Queen of Thule" (iUd., pp. 115-20). 

6 Vide also "Is Love Worth Learning?" {iUd., p. 53) and "A Sail" 
(ibid., p. 68). 

7 "Anselm and Bianca" (ibid., p. 47). 



JOHN DAVIDSON" 7 

Scotland he has as yet no important thoughts to reveal. Only one 
of the plays, the semi-autobiographical tragic farce Smith, contains 
thought that can in any way be described as philosophic. It ex- 
presses the poet's hatred for "mental boot-blacking," his youthful 
ambitions for fame, and his feeling that one must be fanatic ''to 
smite a passage through a close-fisted world. "^ "Smith" thus epit- 
omizes all that is truly great to Davidson. He is the impatient 
man of genius fighting the world. He obeys nature and not au- 
thority, he exclaims against 

' ' The most inhuman, the most ungodly word, 
Sinner "9 

and denounces 

The hydra-headed creeds; the sciences, 

That deem the thing is known when it is named; 

And literature, thought's palace prison fair; 

Philosophy, the grand inquisitor 

That racks ideas and is fooled with lies.io 

These sentiments, though significant because they suggest a point 
of view that subsequently matures in his ballads and testaments, 
can hardly with fairness be considered the product of keen thought. 
They read more like the adolescent hysterics of a youth quivering 
with the desire of revolutionizing belief and deciding at one stroke 
world-problems. Their significance lies not so much in their thought 
value as in the fact that they reveal a metaphysical bent of mind 
that ultimately produces materialistic poetry. 

This philosophic attitude apparent in "Smith" becomes espe- 
cially evident in Davidson's poetical character sketches that ap- 
peared in In a Music Hall. Lily Dale, thirty and plump, contriv- 
ing to bring out "the meaning that tickles ";^^ Airshire Jock made 
a poet by whiskey and Burns ;^- Stanley Trafford, "the Sentimental 
Star," who once loved the "star- veiled truth";" are not mere 
matter-of-fact studies. They are all created because the poet is in- 
terested in explaining their souls. The "diameter" of things or the 
meaning of life is indeed the problem that gradually becomes more 

8 "Smith" (Plays, p. 230). n/n a Music Kail, pp. 6-7. 

9 "Smith" {Hid., p. 232). '12 I6i(?., pp. 45-9. 

10 lUd., p. 236. 13 Hid., pp. 7-9. 



8 JOHN DAVIDSON 

and more significant to Davidson and determines the nature and 
character of his poetry. 

Davidson's early productions thus reveal three chief qualities: 
an interest in solid things in his nature poems that is some- 
what earthy and later develops into materialism; a playfulness 
of imagination and ingenuity of word play in his dramas that 
mature in his novels and are transformed in his later work into 
passionate rhetorical qualities ; and a metaphysical bent that ripens 
into his later concepts of materialistic monism. He has as yet 
no significant thoughts to offer; though a few poems in which he 
pleads for the empire of love suggest something of the propa- 
gandist that develops in the Testaments and the Plays. He has as 
yet not found a powerful vehicle for expression and he has only a 
few simple vivid impressions to transmit into poetry. This absence 
of any profound thought would not in itself imply an inferiority in 
poetic powers of any other writer. The productions of a poet need 
not necessarily contain a philosophic system of thought. Anything 
in his stream of consciousness that becomes vital to him, the poet 
may arrest and transfigure into a poem. He may convey an idea 
or sentiment that he feels intensely ; he may dazzle with a patch of 
color ; or he may flash the dumb agony of a soul ; and, provided he 
succeeds in arousing by appropriate words and rhythm a reciprocal 
vivid response on the part of the reader, he has created a poem. 
Whether he selects metaphysical themes, or expresses his sheer de- 
light in color, sound, or movement depends solely on the kind of 
things that are real to him. Davidson was, however, the type of 
poet whose greatest source of emotion and whose most vital experi- 
ences were derived from a consciousness of things that may be called 
philosophical. This absence of keen thought in Davidson's early 
work involved therefore a lack of profound consciousness of life 
and consequently the production of a poetry not altogether convinc- 
ing. His mastery over utterance was moreover imperfect. Crude 
phrases like "My heart is burning. It scorches me"" (which David- 
son later corrected in Godfrida) occur occasionally. He lacked the 
compactness, the gauntness, and the strength that some of his later 
poems display. In the presence of the blaze of his later work these 
poems produced in Scotland become pallid; their playfulness ap- 
pears frivolity ; and their denunciations sound shrill. He had how- 

■i-ilbid., p. 53. 



X 



JOHN DAVIDSON 9 

ever an abundance of creative power, a nimbleness of fancy, and the 
freshness and daring of youthfulness. He was moreover in love 
with sunshine and solid things and was, above all, intensely genuine. 

Ill 

With such tastes and proclivities Davidson arrived in London 
in 1890, determined to create for himself a literary career. In 
''A Would-be-Londoner "IS he later described banteringly the ad- 
vent of ambitious young Scotchmen who came to conquer the town 
with their brilliancy; and in the Fleet Street Eclogues he hinted at 
the hell of writing for bread that such young men frequently ex- 
perienced. "Nine tenths" of his time in London, as he complained 
towards the close of his life, "was wasted in the endeavor to earn a 
livelihood. "i« His time was spent largely in offering contributions 
to The Glasgow Herald, The Speaker, The Yelloiv Book and The 
Chap-Book, and in writing romances, short stories, sketches and 
dramatizations. Though these numerous productions are hardly 
representative of what he wanted to do or could do, yet they reveal 
quite clearly what was going on within him. Stimulated by his 
readings of continental authors and by his instinctive opposition 
to much of the literature produced in contemporary England, he 
was clarifying his attitude toward the art of poetry and was 'also 
gradually forming a consistent philosophy of life that later became 
uniquely his own. 

Traces of the growth of his ideas are to be found even in the 
five novels that he published in London. None of these novels really 
displays Davidson's powers at their highest ; though, as Mr. O'Brien 
pointed out, they are at least as good as The Napoleon of Notting- 
ham Hill, and certainly anteceded and must have suggested the 
creation of such types of fiction. They read like the prosings of an 
active mmd overflowing with creative energy. They are picturesque 
tales of heroes who follow out, in the Don Quixote manner, a particu- 
lar pose or point of view with a mad-like persistency ,- their effective- 
ness depending not on the insight into life displayed by the charac- 
ters, which IS but slight, but on an overflow of hurly burly wit and 
on an inexhaustible supply of word-play, prattle, epigram, paradox 

15 Mtss Armstrong's and Other Circumstances, pp. 32-43. 

16 Triumph of Mammon, p. 151. 



10 JOHN DAVIDSON 

and absurd situations. But beneath the extended practical jokes and 
delicious nonsense of the tales there is an unmistaken serious intent. 
A Practical Novelist is a travesty on novel writing in general. The 
hero, Maxwell Lee, in the company of Briscoe, an intoxicated Sancho 
Panza, tries to perform a novel in actual life and deliberately becomes 
a villain in order to study the effects produced by his arbitrary liter- 
ary conduct on real people. ' Baptist Lake is composed partly in 
order to ridicule the taste for paradox and preciosity and indirectly 
demonstrates among other things the inferiority of successful men. 
Earl Lavender not merely attacks the principle of Evolution but 
the numerous young men who come out every day with something 
they consider new and revolutionary, "fantastical creatures made 
what they are by the pseudo-philosophy, feeble poetry and foolish 
fiction ' ' of the day. These tales thus reveal more than a passion for 
the paradox of the early nineties that finds its most brilliant expres- 
sion in Wilde. They display a mind that disbelieves in art for art's 
sake and exhibit, through a veil of fantastic fooling, a materialistic 
attitude that is essentially almost philosophical. The genuineness 
and the metaphysical tastes already evident in the poetry he com- 
posed in Scotland are hardening in London into definite principles. 

The serious elements back of these stories, though pronounced, 
are, however, rather weak. The author is too much in good humor 
with himself and the world to take things too thoughtfully. His 
moral earnestness is not deep. It does not extend beyond admira- 
tion for the magnanimity and adventuresomeness of adolescence 
and dislike for pettiness and pretentiousness. The horse play di- 
gressions are so numerous that the reader often loses sight of the 
point of the author 's ridicule and of the seriousness of thought that 
underlies his work. Davidson's ideas are conveyed directly and 
unequivocally only in the numerous prose essays, sketches and dia- 
logues that he composes in this period. Many of these prose con- 
tributions appeared in the files of half forgotten magazines and 
were published in volume form at a later period. Some of these 
reflections were exhumed from periodicals in The Man Forbid and 
Other Essays edited by Mr. O'Brien; others were published in 
Paragraphs and Sentences; and the most valuable were selected by 
Davidson himself and published in 1903 with a few slight, easily 
distinguishable changes in A Rosary. 

There can be but little doubt that when Davidson wrote these 



JOHN DAVIDSON 11 

reflections, essays, sketches and imaginary interviews, he was at 
least externally influenced by Nietzsche and Ibsen, In Para- 
graphs and Sentences Davidson thus introduces to English readers 
Nietzsche's views on conscience, compassion, gratitude and woman. 
Nietzsche's method of expression through aphorisms, iterated sug- 
gestions and ironical similes seems especially to appeal to him ; and 
he experiments accordingly in writing maxims of his own in the 
manner of Nietzsche on the difficulty of detaching one's proper 
thought from the mass of ideas obtained from others, and on the 
importance of realizing that dignity is impudence. He proceeds, 
furthermore, to analyze in the Nietzschean fashion various authors 
and finds fault with Carlyle 's hypocrisy and with the naked realism 
of Zola. Even in A Random Itinerary, which is primarily a series 
of sketches of London parks and suburbs, he frequently breaks up 
a description of reposeful upland hamlets by introducing an imagi- 
nary disputant in order to be enabled to praise Ibsen, "that great 
Scotchman, "^^ and denounce the factitious decadence that exists 
only ''in the fancies of a few."^^ This influence that Nietzsche and 
Ibsen exert on Davidson is largely, however, in the manner of a 
propelling factor that goads him on to form opinions of his own on 
poetry, based in the main on the opposition to preciosity to be met 
with in his novels and on an emphasis of his own growing meta- 
physical tastes. 

Poetry, according to the Davidson of the eighteen nineties, must 
have two chief characteristics : it must be genuine and must aim to 
express the heart of things. By the word genuine Davidson implies 
something that springs directly from experience and observation of 
life.^^ The poet must keenly feel something conveyed from the 
world that is actual to him, which experience he transmutes into 
poetry. There can therefore be no ''art for art's sake"; for tech- 
nique must express something, and this something must be the ex- 
perience vital to the poet and not the abstract pleasure of mere 
expression. Moreover, since poetry is an empiric "stating the world 
afresh, ' ' it follows that neither Tennyson nor Browning is a genuine 
poet. Tennyson and Browning, according to Davidson, really did 
not feel things genuinely: they looked upon life through Shake- 

17^ Random Itinerary, p, 186. is Ihid. 

19 The Man ForMd and Other Essays, p. 67. 



12 JOHN DAVIDSON 

spearean eyes and saw men "as trees walking. "^^ Tennyson, who 
was a master artificer rather than artist, described "confections of 
passions for use in ladies' seminaries" and hid his head like the 
fabled ostrich "in some sand-bed of Arthurian legend. "^^ Brown- 
ing, "the boy's poet par excellence,"^- was not without a certain 
limited intensity,"^ but owing to "a frantic tei-rified optimism" he 
did not have the courage to think honestly and took shelter in the 
"paradoxical optimism of The Ring and the Book."-^ Indeed per- 
haps the only poets since Shakespeare who really wrote poetry that 
was a genuine outgrowth of their experience were Burns, "whose 
eyes were open ' ' ; Wordsworth, who had a keen insight into the true 
character of the world; and Blake, whose eyes were likewise open 
for a time. The poems of James Thomson and Hood's "Song of 
the Shirt ' ' are, in their place, the chief poetic creations of the nine- 
teenth century that will command attention precisely because both 
poets sang of the actualities of life. They trusted themselves and 
saw with their own eyes,^^ 

Such a conception of poetry does not imply that poets, in order 
to be "genuine," must limit themselves to writing on the woman 
in unwomanly rags or on steam and electricity. Literature has in- 
deed other functions besides voicing the misery aroused at the sight 
of suffering millions f^ its theme may be heroic fables or the beauty 
of the moon. There is thus room and to spare for a poet like Mr. 
Yeats, who describes people of the Faerie Hills, provided the poet 
does not treat faery lore in the manner of an antiquarian but be- 
cause faery lore is to him a living experienee.^^ 

Poetry, according to Davidson, must, moreover, not merely be 
genuine ; it must also express the heart of things. It is never 
matter-of-fact reproduction of life. It is fundamentally an offering 
of ' ' the wine of life in chased goblets, ' ' instead of flinging the mere 
"bunches plucked from the stem."^^ It is true "romance" that 
consists not in avoiding modern life but in 'presenting its most sig- 
nificant elements, the very "diameter" of things.^^ There is there- 
fore no room in great art for the types of realism of a Zola or a 

20 A Bosary, p. 37. 25 lUd., p. 37. 

21 Ihid., p. 37. 26 Ihid., p. 38. 

22 Ihid., p. 185. 27 The Man Forbid and Other Essays, pp. 94-5. 

23 Ibid., p. 77. 28 Godfrida, p. 3. 

24 Ibid., p. 38. 29 A Eosary, p. 83. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 13 

Thackeray, who offers ''impressions of the surface of passing phases 
of modern life,"^" or for the mood of a Keats, who cries shame on 
the memory of Newton because "he had destroyed all the poetry of 
the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours." 

Davidson's views on the technique of poetry proceed from the 
same standpoint. Since poetry springs directly from living experi- 
ence, ''liberty of utterance" and "spontaneity" should be the mark 
of the highest poetry.^^ The greatest form of liberty can be ob- 
tained, however, only under restraint. Because a poet submits to 
meters and rhythm he can thus rise above common sense and ordi- 
nary processes of ratiocination and express himself more imme- 
diately. Othello's image 

Like to a Pontic sea 

Whose icy current and compulsive course 
. Never knows the tiring ebb, but keeps due on 

To the Propontic and the Hellespont; 

Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace 

Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love 

Till that a capable and wide revenge 

Swallow them up 

reduced to prose could not be read "with a sober face." "It is the 
meter, the lightning dance of it, that lays common sense under a 
spell,'' and makes possible a spontaneous expression of poetry.^' 
Furthermore the narrative and dramatic forms that involve the 
most numerous restraints are the forms that enable the greatest 
type of spontaneity.^^ When a poet writes a lyric poem he is partly 
ashamed for taking the world into his confidence and poses 
slightly.^* In the drama and narrative, however, all fear and 
responsibility of feeling and utterance are removed, because the 
sentiments expressed are attributed to a character conceived under 
definite limitations, and the utterance of the poet thus becomes 
freer and fuller. For similar reasons the great discovery of Eliza- 
bethan dramatists was the madman, for such a character made pos- 
sible the greatest liberty of expression.^^ 

Entertaining such attitudes towards poetry, which are in the 
main descriptive of his own tendencies as a poet, Davidson is bound 

30 iMd., p. 161. 33 lUd., p. 127. 

31 The Man ForMd and Other Essays, p. 125. 34 Hid., p. 75. 
szlbid., pp. 158-60. spIUd., pp. 128-30. 



14 JOHN DAVIDSON 

to find fault with most of the contemporary criticism of literature. 
Thus he denies the very possibility of the art of literary criticism.^^ 
If art can spring only directly from experience and is not genuine 
when it is a literary echo, then it follows that one can give an ac- 
count artistically of poetry only by means of painting or music or 
any other art that involves the use of a medium other than words ; 
for literary criticism of literature can at most be an echo and of no 
higher value than imitative verse. Instead of literary criticism one 
might however write a criticism of literature. The test of such 
criticism should be experience of life rather than the comparative 
method which is of value only as a subsidiary aid in dealing with 
the growing mass of ' ' imitative verse. " " Poetry, ' ' explains David- 
son, "is the product of originality of a first-hand experience and 
observation of life, of direct communion with men and women, with 
the seasons of the year, with day and night. The critic will there- 
fore be well advised, if he have the good fortune to find something 
that seems to him poetry, to lay it out in the daylight and the 
moonlight, to take it into the street and the fields, to set against it 
his own experience and observation of life and should he be a poet 
himself, to remember how it was that he wrote his own poetry. "^^ 
Criticism of this type is still almost in its infancy. * ' It reaches its 
teens perhaps in Matthew Arnold; and is not yet out of them. "^^ 
It is however useful; for, whether offered by friend or enemy, it 
encourages authors who have ' ' small or fluctuating constituencies ' ' 
in their struggle for existence in the minds of others.^^ 

These conclusions offered by Davidson largely in reviews and 
in dialogues, that are a literary apotheosis of the modern inter- 
view, may not impress one at the present moment in the midst of 
the proclamations of imagists and futurists as striking critical depar- 
tures. They are not even altogether original. Davidson 's conception 
of poetry as an empiric ''stating the world afresh" and his advice to 
the critic that in testing poetry he ''set it against his own experi- 
ence and observation of life" resemble rather closely Carlyle's 
dicta that "it is the essence of the poet to be new" and that the 
true measure of poetry is "human nature and the nature of things 
at large." Davidson's attitude towards matter-of-fact imitations 

36 A Eosary, p. 185, as A Bosary, p. 94. 

37 The Man Forbid and Other Essays, p. 67. 39 A Bosary, p. 97. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 15 

of life, his plea for genuineness of emotion, his belief in the trans- 
forming powers of meter, and even his insistence on the need of 
presenting the "diameter" of life through direct communion, can 
hardly be considered new offerings to critical theory. The con- 
clusions that he draws by ruthlessly applying such principles to 
contemporary literature are, however, decidedly striking. In the 
eighteen-nineties they certainly marked an independent thought 
contribution : for at that time it required great mental courage for 
a young man who opposed Victorian taste and ideals to fly in the 
face of both Wilde's garbling of French sestheticism and Mr. 
Moore's importation of French naturalism. Both of these impor- 
tations were in their time healthy reactions against restraining 
qualities in Victorian literature. Wilde's "nature imitates art 
far more than art imitates nature" was a battle against Ruskin's 
conception of the mechanical imitation of nature and against that 
Victorian evaluation of things that made critics consider Dickens 
a great writer because his novels were ethically useful. The 
naturalism of a Mr. Moore was similarly a recoil from the Vic- 
torian romantic feeling that everything which was contemporary 
was ugly. They were at bottom assertions in favor of the larger 
freedom and vitality of poetry. Davidson, though resisting the re- 
pressing qualities in Victorian literature, realized however that art 
for art 's sake was untenable and led to a divorce from life ; and that 
art for truth 's sake led to surface impressions and a starving of the 
imagination ; and he offered instead (without however actually using 
Mr. Ransome's formula) art for life 's sake— art that has no ulterior 
purpose beyond a sincere interpretation or imaginative recreation of 
the significant things in actual life. He thus became a forerunner of 
the recent theorists of new poetry. What differentiates him largely 
from these theorists and from his contemporaries is his conception 
of what is significant in modern life. For his selection of signifi- 
cant elenients in the eighteen nineties is not based on objective study 
but rather on analysis of the elements important to him. His very 
opposition to aestheticism is due to his interest in material things 
already displayed in his work in Scotland, and the form of his oppo- 
sition to naturalism is likewise an outgrowth of his own metaphys- 
ical tastes. Like a true metaphysician, the search for ultimate 
causes only, is to him significant; whence his abhorrence of mere 
matter-of-fact reproductions of details of life. 



16 JOHN DAVIDSON 

The poetry that Davidson composes in the early nineties is 
largely an almost literal application of his theories. Even from the 
standpoint of form, though he does not produce any plays and 
rarely goes beyond the restraint of the iambic in his metrical ex- 
periments, yet he tries to express himself spontaneuosly according 
to the principles laid down in his theories ; and therefore vs^rites but 
rarely simple lyrics like "In Romney Marsh."*'' Instead he em- 
ploys forms like the eclogue, ballad and dramatic monologue, 
through which he can convey lyric emotion through a superficial 
objectivity and thus obtain what he considers a freedom of utter- 
ance. The eclogue and ballad thus become his special instruments 
after being slightly modified to suit his needs. In the eclogue, as 
adapted by Davidson, he is enabled to indulge in digressions and 
produce a crescent growth of mood by means of passionate choral 
outbursts on the part of loosely conceived imaginary characters. 
The thought moreover can be dropped, resumed, and varied at 
pleasure ; alternations of lyric and hortatory passages can be intro- 
duced and the length of the verse be varied to suit the mood. All 
this can be done without the author speaking in his own name and, 
therefore, according to Davidson's theory, frankly and unrestrain- 
edly. Similarly the ballad in his hand lends itself to a thinly veiled 
subjective relation of a simple story by bounds and leaps. Textual 
repetitions, colloquial phraseology, and a simple phrasing add to 
the feeling of spontaneity. The poet moreover expresses his own 
views on life in the cloak of anonymity. The dramatic monologue 
that involves an objectivity more profound, he uses, however, more 
sparingly. An occasional success like " Thirty Bob a Week" not- 
withstanding, it was not till later in life when he composed his 
Testaments, that the dramatic monologue became in his hands a 
really powerful means of expression. 

The themes of the poems are in further harmony with his 
theories. They are all directly an outgrowth of the effects produced 
on the poet by contemporary life. The charm of the poems of 
course depends partly on the novelty of causing Fleet Street re- 
porters to sing eclogues, and of rendering psychologic tales in ballad 
form. But what impresses one most is the poet's determination to 
sing courageously of modern things. This daring of tone is con- 
veyed not merely in phrases like ''served up hot to God,"*^ and in 
40 Ballads and Songs, p. 107. 4i Ibid., p. 93. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 17 

the use of Christianity as a decorative myth/^ but in the very 
selection of themes. The dauntlessness of a betrayed soul in hell 
that knew no fear and walked out ;^^ the courage of the clerk who 
faced the music and refused to believe that it was all ''luck and 
toss" J** and the passionate cry of 

We are too young to fall to dust 
And too unsatisfied to die^s 

is bound to meet with response because one feels that the author is 
not shrinking from actualities and is dealing passionately with sig- 
>nificant things. Characteristically enough, the modern things sig- 
nificant to Davidson are however always philosophical questions. 
In the eclogues reporters meet in London fog under smoky skies not 
merely to sing of speckled thrushes and primroses but to argue 
violently on art, heredity and world problems. In the Ballads and 
Songs the chief themes are the meaning of heaven, hell and creeds. 
These are the things most vital to him ; they constitute his concep- 
tion of ' ' romance " or the " diameter ' ' of things. He indeed pauses 
to interpret the pathos of a laborer's wife who married on the sly,*^ 
and he sings of'trains^^ and shrieking steam.^^ But even in such 
moods it is not the passing vision of ordinary joys and sorrows that 
haunts his imagination but rather the queries that lie back of it. 
Human beings are not treated realistically ; they are of interest only 
in so far as they represent to the poet a certain philosophical atti- 
tude. They are all searching for the meaning of life. 

It is this quest for the ''meaning of day and night," barren 
though it be for the time being of any profound conceptions, that 
gives to his poetry of the eighteen nineties an intensity that was 
wanting in his earlier work. Nature in the Fleet Street Eclogues 
is no longer to Davidson a mere joyous catalogue of trees and flowers 
and hedgerows white with May. It has a new vitality ; trembling 
day puts on "a saffron wedding dress, "^^ and laburnums open in 
"thunder showers of greenish gold";^'' for the poet is on the verge 
of understanding "the passion of the grass that grows. "^^ It is 
moreover this feeling that nature is about to say something mo- 

*2ihid., "Ballad of Heaven," "Ballad of Hell," etc. 

43 Ibid., p. 84. 46 iMd., p. 98. 49 Fleet Street Eclogues, p. 70. 

44 Ihid., p. 91. 47 lUd., p. 101. 50 Ibid., p. 70. 

45 Ibid., p. 75. 48 Ibid., p. 8. 51 Ibid., p. 60. 



18 JOHN DAVIDSON 

mentous that makes so effective the continuous inroads of the de- 
scriptions of landscape into the midst of passionate discussions on 
art and evolution by the characters in the eclogues. Similarly in 
Ballads and Songs where the nature passages are lar'^ely used as a 
background, day coming ''like a flood "^^ and the sun ''taking 
heaven by storm ' '^^ are not merely decorative ; they are integral 
parts of the endeavor in the poem to interpret the significant things 
in life. The nun who probes life's dearest meaning thus becomes 
"sister to day and night.""* 

It should be emphasized, however, that what impresses one in 
these poems is Davidson's mental attitudes rather than any actual 
thought expressed. In the Fleet Street Eclogues the predominating 
tone is that the world is still alive and there is no cause for despair ; 
for great is man and great are the simple things of life and great 
is England.^^ This attitude alternates with a passion for treading 
on "unpaven ground" that must have been heightened by his 
absence from Scotland. In the Ballads and Songs similarly the poet 
exhorts the world to destroy the man-killing creeds and accept 
gayly its fate by not being afraid of life.^*' Such sentiments full of 
battle and daring exhilarate when passionately uttered. The 
thought offered by Davidson in support of these attitudes is how- 
ever weak. The criticism of creeds in ' ' The Exodus from Hounds- 
ditch" is narrow, as Davidson himself partly realized in his later 
poems. The "Ballad of a Nun"" may be significant as a passionate 
assertion of the joy of life ; but in the form offered by Davidson it 
is rather an outburst of hysteria. In fact Davidson 's greatest depth 
of thought is sounded in a passage that contains a Nietzschean 
mood like 

iSo let us think we are the tortured nerves 
Of Being in travail with a higher type.^s 

His predominating ideal is seemingly expressed in the "Ballad of 
the Making of the Poet" : 

I am a man apart 
A mouth piece for creeds of all the world 

A martyr for all the mundane moods to bear.59 
52 Ballads and Songs, p. 54. ss JMd., p. 53. 54 Hid., p. 61. 

55 "St. George's Day," in Fleet Street Eclogues. 

56 "Ballad in Blank Verse," "The Exodus from Houndsditch, " etc. 
in Ballads and Songs. 57 JMd., p. 52. 

58 Fleet Street Eclogues, p. 153. 59 Ballads and Songs, p. 34. 






JOHN DAVIDSON 19 

Such an attitude is hardly tenable and Davidson later rejected it. 
It betrays the fact that Davidson in the early nineties is still a poet 
in the making. He has gained strength in London by grappling 
courageously with a few ideas. He has discovered a few forms of 
expression suitable to his powers and has accordingly stormed pas- 
sionately against a world that he found intolerable. In A Random 
Itinerary and in his poems he moreover revealed an increased sen- 
sitiveness and tenderness for landscape as well as a courageous love 
of life. His senses and feelings have indeed become deeper and 
richer because he was becoming more definitely a philosophical 
poet ; but his thoughts were still immature. 

His growth as a thinker becomes evident however in the works' 
he publishes at the close of the nineteenth century. He is then still 
not a philosophic thinker, but he becomes more definitely Nietz- 
schean and more materialistic in his thought; and the moods that 
he conveys in his poems are at least consistent. In the Neiv Bal- 
lads and in The Last Ballad and Other Poems the amor fati hitherto 
intermittent becomes more pronounced and the poet insists definitely 
that the battle is for the strong and that the hero is he who will 
fight and is above the laws that overawe the world.®'' Davidson 
pretends no longer to be "a trembling lyre for every wind to 
sound ' ' f^ and this growth in definiteness of thought is accompanied 
in many of the new poems by a greater poetical intensity. In the 
main he composes more impassioned eclogues; his grasp of signifi- 
cant details in the ballads becomes firmer; and his nature poetry 
more fervently meaningful. The morning sings of courage and 
hope and of the glory of being mighty and alone. The sun rises in 
his valor and fights the clouds "pressing the mountains to his burn- 
ing breast. "°^ Not merely does he describe the earth in human 
terms but interprets human qualities in earthy terms. He sings of 
the gray earth of the brain and of the red earth burning in the 
heart.®^ ' ' Feel yourself a part of earth, ' ' Davidson exhorts us ; for 
there is a meaning underlying all matter : the mirth of summer rain 

60 Vide "Piper Play" in Netv Ballads and "Battle," "The Hero," 
"The Pioneer," etc., in The Last Ballad and Other Poems, 

61 Ballads and Songs. 

62 "Matinees" in The Last Ballad and Other Poems. 

63 "Earth to Earth," ibid., p. 111. 



'^Z 20 JOHN DAVIDSON 

i is translated by the earth into terms of growth ; man is part of this 

growth; and all matter is aehmg to become man. 

A similar increase in profundity of ideas is displayed in the 

' dramas that he writes between 1898 and 1900, These are not, like 

his plays composed in Scotland, full of the mad humors of youth ; 
but they are based on deeper thought and consequently characters 
are constructed and scenes are conceived with a keener understand- 
ing of life. Davidson the dramatist sees in this world two kinds of 
human beings : those that are brain-sick and those that are healthy. 
The brain-sick suffer from jealousy, meanness, conviction of sin, 
and lack of heroic daring. They are malicious, underhand, and full 
of intrigue. The healthy dare to seize happiness: they are frank, 
impulsive, brave, look facts in the face, and know how to confront 
death joyously. Three things in life are especially dear to them : 
power and love and the glory of the material things of this world ; 
and as long as they are faithful to their own instincts they triumph. 
In Godfrida the straightforwardness of Siward and Godf rida, whose 
love is absolute, reduces into impotence the intrigues of Isembert 
and Ermengarde. In The Knight of the Maypole hero and heroine 
likewise know of no mean submission ; they are fiery, impulsive and 
battle against malice and deceit until they are victorious. In Self's 
the Man the chief character Urban is similarly of heroic metal. His 
greatest dream is 

But to be tensely strung and give response 

Full souled to every pang of pleasure and pain; 

To be impassioned always and not to die.s* 

His presence makes the air electric, for no one can tell what he will 
say or do. He finally proposes, with absolute indifference to the 
cost of life involved, to make out of Lombardy a sword that will 
stem barbarous invasions. As he does not consult the old and places 
young men at the helm, he would have succeeded in his enterprise 
were it not that he started his career with a compromise. He dared 
not live openly with Saturnia because he was afraid of the opinion 
of the world, and had married Osmunda for the sake of policy. He 
thus depended on others rather than on his instincts and the world 
triumphed. For tragedy, as conceived by Davidson, is not a prod- 
^i' Self's the Man, p. 87. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 21 

uct of conscience or environment: it is the result of mistrust of 
one's instincts and a consequent failure to take advantage of op- 
portunities that do not recur. 

This semi-Nietzschean conception of ethics on which the plays 
are based is responsible for many limitations in his dramatic art. 
One feels that the author frequently limits his sympathetic under- 
standing of certain minor characters because of a too rigid forcing 
of life into the mould of his philosophy. It is only in a play like 
Self's the Man, in which Davidson triumphs sufficiently over his 
philosophy to make out of Osmunda and Philip not sick-brained 
characters but bits of frail humanity, that he produces a drama 
that is intensely human. Moreover the chief appeal that these plays 
make depends not on their Nietzschean ethics but on motives like 
the thwarting of the plans of a courageous mind or the triumph of 
brave lovers over obstacles — elements as old as literature. Yet the 
progress in dramatic power revealed in his dramas of 1898-1900 
is due not merely to a riper experience brought about by practice 
in translating and adapting plays for the London stage. Though 
the Nietzschean thought embodied in those dramas does occasionally 
seduce the author into producing artificial type characters, in the 
main it heightens his critical understanding of life. It gives him a 
consistent philosophic vantage and an intenser zest of life which 
enhance his dramatic skill. Davidson's objective attitude towards 
love and nature which one meets in his earlier work is thus con- 
verted in its passage through a temperament like Davidson's into a 
poetry more intense because it is based on a growing philosophic 
understanding. His theories notwithstanding, Davidson of the 
eighteen nineties was but a minor poet ; because the significant thing 
to him was the mere search for the meaning of things. Not until this 
quest is satisfied by his discovering a philosophic cause that explains 
to him the origin and significance of all phenomena does he produce 
really mature verse. This he achieves towards the close of the cen- 
tury when he can finally look down from a philosophic height and 
reflect that 

We are fire, 
Cut off and cooled awhile; and shall return, 
The earth and all thereon that live and die, 
To be again candescent in the sun, 



22 JOHN DAVIDSON 

Or in the sun's in tenser, purer source. 

1 

Arise and let us sing; and, singing, build 
A tabernacle even with these ghastly bones. 

IV 

This philosophic vantage ground attained by Davidson at the 
close of the century becomes not only his theme but the great source 
of his inspiration and is the direct cause of his strength and of his 
weakness as a poet. He approaches the problem of the uprearing 
of the tabernacle from the constructive critical point of view. As 
he keeps on writing, poetry gradually begins to mean more to him 
than a mere search for the meaning of life and a spontaneous ex- 
pression of vivid impressions : he begins to realize that its intrinsic 
value is determined by the quality of the emotional understanding of 
such meaning and by the kind of imaginative power that receives the 
given impressions. The first essential of a poet is of course to be honest 
and render what he feels at first hand ; but if the freedom and im- 
periousness of his imaginative powers are limited by ignorance and 
shallowness of emotional depth the poet will produce things insig- 
nificant and imitative. "Poetry is the will to live and the will to 
power, poetry is the ertipire. Poetry is life and force. '"'^ The 
great poet is a tyrant who tries to impose upon the world his own ^ 
imagination and compels others to think and feel in his manner.^^ 
Thus, according to Davidson, Wordsworth tried to create a Nature 
Worship; he projected his own soul and character into the world 
and wanted to substitute for Christendom a William Wordsworth- 
dom. Therein lay his greatness. Similarly Carlyle proclaimed 
himself in his heroes and tried to create a cult of great men.; But 
Carlyle 's conception of the world is too narrow — ''Carlyledom is 
a strait- jacket for the world and a dusty way to death and to the 
dull hell of the drill sergeant and the knout"; and Wordsworth- 
dom is parochial ; it has no room for great passionate romance, for 
a Napoleon or Wagner. Neither of the two had the kind of imagi- 
native power that might serve as "an enduring habitation for the 
spirit of an era. ' '^^ In the entire range of English literature there 

65 Holiday and Other Poems, p. 149. 

66 The Theatocrat, p. 13. ' 67 md.^ p. 15. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 23 

are indeed but few great poets who had supreme imaginations. 
Shakespeare had one of those minds. He lived in Christendom; 
and accepted Heaven and Hell and the entire religion and morality 
of his day; his imagination living passionately, "more intensely 
than that of any other man, ' ' within those limits. The intensity of 
the freedom of that imagination ''beating against the bars of re- 
ligion and morality" accordingly still astounds the world.^^ There 
was Milton whose austere imagination, though frequently atrophied 
into dogma, yet, tempered by the humanity of a Shakespeare, 
created the love of Adam and Eve and the rebellion of Satan. Dry- 
den's imagination merely "beat the air in strong low-pitched 
flight" through Anglicanism and the "hot-house Catholicism of 
James"; Pope's imagination could never mount beyond the Rosi- 
crucian doctrine of spirits.^^ With Burns again a free imagina- 
tion burst forth, — one that lived in the same moral world as Shakes- 
speare, and felt keenly sin and hell and the passion of love.'^*' Then 
came Wordsworth and Carlyle whose imaginations in spite of their 
imperiousness were too narrow and therefore became doctrinal 
rather than emotional. Since their time no big imaginations have 
really appeared. Victorian poets like Tennyson and Browning live 
indeed in Christendom in the same material-spiritual world in 
which all English poets have subsisted ; but their emotions and their 
imaginative power are small. "To have had to write Macbeth 
would have killed such men as Tennyson and Browning ' ' ;^^ for a 
great imagination must not merely dabble with a few spurts of 
passing impressions, but must have the power to disport itself 
within eternity and infinity.'^? , 

This gift of imperiousness of imagination is, according to David- 
son, not possessed by modern poets largely because they have not 
the courage to look things in the face and to think as if nothing 
had been written in the past.'^ They conceive the world imitatively 
rather than genuinely and are merely literary echoes. They accept 

6s The Triumph of Mammon, p. 164. 70 Ihid., p. 155. 

69 The Triumph of Mammon, pp. 154-5. 7i Hid., p. 164. 

"^^ Mammon and His Message, p. 160. "Imagination requires nothing 
less that the infinite." 

73 76t(?., p. 171. "We must know the best that has been thought and 
imagined in all ages, not for itself, but in order to avoid it, as we would avoid 
an exhausted atmosphere. Literature is the greatest foe of literature." 



24 JOHN DAVIDSON 

Shakespeare's vision of the Universe without really moving about 
freely in it. Heaven, Hell and Sin are real nowadays only to the 
Salvationist to whom Heaven is still an actual place of perpetual 
joy and Hell a burning lake with real flames in which the damned 
suffer eternal pain.'^^ Though the modern poet does not believe in 
a literal Heaven and Hell he writes as if they were. He has no 
faith but he can offer no substitute for God and is afraid lest the 
world become a vacuum the moment he discards the machinery and 
symbols of a divinely created and guided world.'^^ He thus lives 
in a world of symbolic shams and faint-hearted make-believes. If 
the modern poet could only dare to step out and cut loose from the 
past and find a substitute by creating a new habitation for the 
imagination that should be genuinely real to him and Universe-in- 
clusive in scope, a new era would begin in poetry. The poet would 
then no longer be ' ' literary ' ' and reproduce impressions in symbols 
he does not believe in, and his very experience would gain in poetical 
significance because of the grandeur of his living imagination. 

Impressed by this situation Davidson proceeds to erect a new 
dwelling place for the imagination on the basis of things that are 
real to modern man. According to Davidson modern man knows 
that there is no other world ; that there is nothing immaterial ; and 
that man is composed of the same elements that the distant stars 
are made of. This knovv^ledge on the part of man is the factor that 
can make possible a new imagination : for if mankind will but con- 
template the material origin of the universe, its ethical ideals and 
entire mode of life would change ; and such change is bound to be 
accompanied by a new art.'^^ 

Religious ethical systems are based, according to Davidson, on 
certain conceptions of sin and obedience. By sin is usually meant 
violation of the laws of God for which disobedience punishment is 
meted out in a hereafter. But from the standpoint of a materialist 
there is neither Sin, nor God, nor Hereafter. Conviction of sin is 
merely the effect of physical exhaustion that follows a great dis- 
charge of force. When a man enjoys a pleasure he does not feel 
sinful ; only when a state of exhaustion sets in because of lack of 

74 7bt(?., p. 160. Tsr/ie Theatocrat, p. 138. 

76 Ihid., p. 76, and also Dedication to The Testament of John Davidson, 
p. 31. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 25 

energy or over-exertion does he have the * ' conviction of sin. " It is 
therefore clear that there is nothing really bad in man 's indulging 
in any kind of pleasure ; though it is true that over-indulgence may 
lead to a reaction that is physically painful.'^^ The origin of con- 
ceptions of Heaven and Hell can similarly be explained material- 
istically as misapprehensions of the "subconscious recollections of 
the peace of ether, of the glory of nebula, and of the condensation 
and contraction suffered by the matter of which man consisted dur- 
ing the millions and millions of years of the evolution of the solar 
system. ' ''^^ Matter has memory and passion ; and oxygen, nitrogen 
and other constituent elements that make up man, have thus a dim 
consciousness of what had occurred before they entered into the 
makeup of man; and it is this dim consciousness misapprehended by 
man that led to conceptions of Asgard, Olympus and Heaven. 
Finally God Himself is merely this self-consciousness misunder- 
stood. "The generative power of man and the all-pervading ether 
conscious in him, are the material sources of God."'^ Thus seem- 
ingly all religious ethics are founded on misapprehension. , 

Ethics should instead be based on the laws of matter. Good 
should be that which enhances the material power of self-conscious- 
ness in man who is matter's instrument of consciousness. There 
should be no cult of virginity because it is contrary to the eosmo- 
logical processes of nature : The chief function of woman is to breed 
children.^" Mankind should rid itself of the ascetic incubus ; for 
material things are here to be enjoyed.^^ Let man not be afraid of 
his emotions and deeds. Let him do what he really wants and infi- 
nite greatness and infinite terror will await him.®^ Moreover man 
must not hesitate, in his endeavor to increase his capacities of con- 
sciousness and self-consciousness, to be hard on himself and on 
others. He must not be afraid to cause pain. 

Pain? 
It may be that matter in itself is pain, 
Sweetened in sexual love that so mankind, 

77 The Theatocrat, p. 65, 

■!»IUd., p. 42. 79 76tU, p. 27. 

80 The Testament of John Davidson, p. 140, etc. 

81 Vide accounts of Heaven and Hell in The Testament of an Empire 
Builder and in The Testament of a Prime Minister. 

82 The Theatocrat. 



26 JOHN DAVIDSON 

The medium of matter's consciousness 
May never cease to know — the solid bent 
Of matter, the infinite vanity 
Of the universe, being evermore 
Self-knowledge.83 

The big man should emancipate himself from subservience to the 
needs of the multitudes ; for the great thing in life is not to lessen 
pain and increase the happiness of the many but rather to increase 
knowledge for the sake of knowing. The hero should be hard, mis- 
understood, and trusting his own instinct do for the world with 
love what he thinks good for it. Finally, man should know how to 
face death. The knowledge that there is no end, that there is noth- 
ing to fall back on but himself, the naked universe stripped of all 
illusions, should not terrify him. He should face a return to ether 
with joy, glorying in the fact that he will become in the nebula 

"Essential fire, free from solitude. ' 

This is the freedom of the universe. "84 

I These points of view which, according to Davidson, are an out- 
growth of the knowledge of the universe, should guide man in deter- 
mining the various modern social problems that confront him. ^ He 
should thus oppose representative government because it is based 
fundamentally on the conception of the greatest good for the many 
rather than on the welfare of genius. But since the mania for suf- 
frage does exist, Davidson thinks of stemming the effects of suf- 
frage by limiting the male vote to married men who are house- 
holders.^^ _ The educational system should for similar reasons be 
changed : people should be taught only the things actually known, 
i. e., the history of matter; for all other learning is based on illu- 
sions and must be done away with : the literature and books of the 
past are a curse. ' They may delight but they are in the way of 
seeing and feeling things afresh. 1 The past must be undone; for 

The rainbow reaches Asgard now no more; 
Olympus stands untenanted; the dead 
Have their serene abode in earth itself. 
Our womb, our nurture, and our sepulchre. 

83 The Testament of a Vivisector, pp. 26-7. 

84 The Theatocrat, p. 146. 

85 The Testament of John Davidson, p. 27. 



> 



JOHN DAVIDSON 27 

Expel the sweet imaginings, profound 
Humanities and golden legends, forms 
Heroic, beauties, tripping shades, embalmed 
Through hallowed ages in the fragrant hearts 
And generous blood of men; the climbing thoughts 
"Whose roots ethereal grope among the stars, 
Whose passion-flowers perfume eternity, 
Weed out and tear, scatter and tread them down; 
Dismantle and dilapidate high heaven. 86 
/ 

i— -Socialism in so far as it is a leveling force should be crushed by 
the genius of the world. In so far as it is due to a feeling on the 
part of workmen of a lack of room in England to make the world 
to their order let them hive off and acquire new lands and fortunes 
of their own elsewhere.^^ Woman Suffrage should likewise be sup- 
pressed : Woman has intellect and man has intelligence ; woman has 
ruse, chicanery, and nerve brain, and man has passion, instinct, and 
genius. In a conflict man the creator will triumph. Woman's 
place in life is that of a companion and child-breeder and not of 
voter. But since there is already this muddle of representative 
government, permit temporarily only married women who are 
mothers of three children the right to vote.^^ Finally, the Irish 
Question should be solved with a strong hand. The biggest type of 
man, according to Davidson, is the Englishman.^^ Things should 
therefore be so arranged that a solid English Empire be created: 
this can be done by granting autonomy to the Welsh, English, 
Highland, Lowland, Ulster, Leinster, Connaught, Munster ; but all 
must remain English. "To live with England and yet to decline 
the destiny of England is to be unfortunate indeed."^" j 

On the basis of such knowledge and application of principles of 
life, Davidson concludes that a new and really vital literature 
might be created. Because of the new ethics, the old tragedies of 
sin and conseience^ill become almost meaningless. ', The whole 
world will therefore have to be moulded afresh ; for vriat was done 
in the past will be as nothing. Since men will dare to do things 

86 The Testament of a Man Forbid, pp. 11-12. 

87 The Testament of John Davidson, p. 17. 
ssibid., p. 27. 

»9 Ibid., p. 18. "The Englishman is the Overman; and the history of 
England is the history of his evolution." 
90 Ibid., pp. 14-16. 



28 JOHN DAVIDSON 

without restraint of religious ethics, not only will new visions of 
terror and greatness be opened up,^^ but the very freedom of human 
conduct will create a life and art that will be full of a " youth and 
freshness more radiant and more fragrant than they ever wore 
even in their prime and pristine vigor. "^2. Finally though this 
novelty of subject matter and life attitude will not affect the form 
of expression, for English blank verse is already ' ' the prof oundest 
and most intelligent voice of matter" and the "subtlest, most 
powerful, and most various organ of utterance articulate faculty 
has produced" ;^^ yet the poetry produced in the new universe bared 
of all illusions will be greater than that of Shakespeare because it 
will not be based on a mere symbol of the universe; it will be a 

statement in emotional terms of the universe itself.^* 

I 

The conclusions that Davidson herewith comes to are not fanci- 
ful or the outgrowth of a wanton desire to start something new. 
They are the product of his mature thought and satisfy a genuine 
inner want. \ The very errors on which his ideas are based are errors 
only because they are applied to poetry in general. They do not 
describe erroneously his own processes as a poet. He thus seem- 
ingly believes that an imperious imagination must, in order to 
produce the highest poetry, either visualize concepts of Heaven, 
Hell and God or else understand them materialistically. That a line 
like 

Absent thee from felicity awhile 

as Davidson claims, is the product of "some eternity of passionate 
emprise" may be true;^^ but that this eternity is the same as the 
keen feeling on the part of a poet of a particular philosophy of 
eternity does not necessarily follow. Great visions of terror and joy 
' ' that fill the mind with a sense of everlastingness ' ' may be produced 
without the poet having had a vision of the Universe in the philo- 
sophical sense. That Burns must have literally felt (as Davidson 
implies) that he was living in a world "suspended by a hair from 

91 The Theatocrat, p. 144, ss md., p. 141. 

92 Holiday and Other Poems, p. 136. s* The Theatocrat, p. 52. 
95 Holiday and Other Poems, p. 148. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 29 

the floor of Heaven above a flaming Hell ' ' in order to have produced 
great poetry in Christendom, is open to question."'' That great 
poetry based on such a vision of Heaven and Hell might be written 
is of course true ; but that such a condition is a sine qua non, is an 
unwarranted assumption. ■- With Davidson, however, who was essen- 
tially a poet on metaphysical themes, such a vision of the Universe 
was an essential.^. Once he became definitely an atheist, he was com- 
pelled to reconstruct the universe so that it would harmonize with 
his lack of beliefs if he was to be genuine in the writing of his 
poetry; else his poetry which was becoming more and more an in- 
terpretation of the significance of life would have degenerated into 
cowardice of thought and emotional dishonesty. 

It must likewise be realized that the fusion of materialism and 
Nietzscheism in Davidson's poetry has also a psychological rather 
than a logical cause. A materialist might deny the immortality of 
the soul and still accept in the main the ethics of the reduction of 
pain for the many. He might reason that since man has no other 
aid to depend on but that of his own kind, conduct that tends to 
increase the welfare of the majority is ''good." He might even be 
tempted, owing to his conception of nature as a mechanical process 
and consequent denial of freedom of will, to look upon the ethical 
laws existing between man and man as inevitable mechanical regu- 
lations. But Davidson, notwithstanding his materialism, considers 
man as master of his fate and the highest good that which increases 
man's vitality or self -consciousness. He reconciles the irrecon- 
cilable by conceiving freedom as the accepting of the laws of matter 
and the working them out bravely. Furthermore, he accepts suf- 
fering as an inevitable detail in the process of evolution of matter 
into higher forms of consciousness and makes a cardinal virtue out 
of amor fati. Such conclusions on the part of Davidson are thus not 
necessary corollaries of his materialism : they are rather interpreta- 
tions of his own sympathies offered in materialistic phraseology. 

Moreover the monism of Davidson, woven though it be of ideas 
of others, is really an original product. Davidson is in his scien- 
tific ideas primarily a poet and not a scientist or philosopher. He 
argues indeed in favor of his hypotheses, but more often he enun- 
ciates things on the basis of his own authority. Things cannot be 
96 The Triumph of Mammon, p. 155. 



30 JOHN DAVIDSON 

known scientifically, he announces several times ; they can be appre- 
hended by poetic powers only.^^ f He thus attains to unity with the 
subconscious universe by raising himself through poetry above ex- 
perimentation and ratiocination. He accepts the nebular hypothesis 
because it is "the most satisfying to the imagination, "°® By a 
"leap across a chasm" with the "vaulting pole of hypothesis" he 
arrives at the conclusion that "light and sound are substantive."^^ 

[_He opposes natural selection largely because the thought of descent 
is repulsive to his imagination. He therefore prefers to believe that 
just as in the mind of a poet thoughts and imaginings of infinite 
variety arise, similarly * ' in the matter of the universe life in infinite 
variety arises and becomes ; not by breaking up of species, but by 
the appearance of species the staple of evolution proceeds. ' '^"^ Be- 
cause of a similar motive the creation of a new species of a louse is 
to him no proof of evolution by natural selection but rather ' ' an in- 
stance of the material or imaginative style of matter in its mood of 
depravity — a mood analogous to that which produces Sinon, Tar- 
tuffe, Parolles, Chivy Slyme. ' '^*^^ To a similar poetic transforma- 
tion of thought is undoubtedly due his attributing intense passions 
to the elements ; and his interpreting the universe as Memory rush- 
ing into Consciousness.^"- 

Not only does Davidson thus transmute the scientific material 
that he appropriates into poetic fancy, but the points of view em- 
bodied in his conceptions, their scientific details notwithstanding, 
are distinctly amplifications of his own understanding of life. The 
poetry of In a Music Hall communicates already a taste for earthy 
material things ; and the eclogues and ballads are already passionate 
searches for the meaning of life with a bias towards materialism. 

^.Problems of cosmology, heaven, hell and sin loom large in all his 
poetry of the early nineties ; for his upbringing in the environment 
of the kirk made these problems the very essence of life to him. 
When he lost his faith in God his serious Scotch mind could not live 
in mere negation or assume permanently the attitude of becoming 
a mere "thoroughfare for all the pageantry of time."^°^ His 

97 The Theatocrat, p. 57 ; Mammon and His Message, p. 173. 

98 Mammon and His Message, p. 164. 

99 The Triumph of Mammon, p. 160. 

100 The Theatocrat, p. 54. ^^^ Hid., p. 40. 

101 md., p. 53. 103 Ballads and Songs, p. 34. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 31 

natural avenue of escape was a naive materialism. That this ma- 
terialism should have consisted largely in expounding modifications 
of Oswald, Haeckel and others is incidental, and was probably due 
to his early training as a chemist and to the popularization of ener- 
gistic monism at the close of the last century. 

t The relationship between Davidson's own mental proclivities 
and the Nietzschean ethics that he adopts is of the same character. 
The resemblance between Davidson's ethics and Nietzsche's im- 
moral ideals are indeed many and striking. Davidson seemingly 
accepts practically all of Nietzsche 's cardinal ideas, such as the will- 
to-power, class morality and amor fati. He is merely non-committal 
about the Eternal Recurrence and opposes definitely only one con- 
ception of Nietzsche — that of the Overman.""* The acceptance of 
Nietzsche's cardinal ethical tests is necessarily accompanied by an 
agreement with Nietzsche's corollaries on Socialism, government, 
woman, sin, asceticism, and Christianity. Even more close are the 
similarities between Nietzsche's views on art and Davidson's opin- 
ions on poetry. _ They both agree that poetry is essentially "the 
affirmation, the blessing, and deification of existence" and both op- 
pose naked realism.^°^ ' ' Artists should not see things as they are ; 
they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger""*' might have been 
said by either. ' Both furthermore believed that poetic creation is 
the outcome of a tyrannical will which stamps its image on all 
things."^ "To represent terrible and questionable things is in itself 
the sign of an instinct of power ;"^*'^ "all art works as a tonic: it 
increases strength, it kindles desire {i. e., feeling of strength) ;""^ 
and ' ' convention is a condition of great art, not an obstacle to it ' '"" 
are sentiments expressed by both. Yet these numerous likenesses 
notwithstanding, Davidson can hardly be called a disciple of Nietz- 
sche. ) In his later work he passes the Nietzschean ideas through a 
materialisfic crucible so that they practically become amplifica- 
tions of his own point of view: Human beings should indeed, as 
Nietzsche says, be hard and not hesitate to cause pain, but this time 
for a new reason, namely, that matter demands this hardness in 
order to attain self-consciousness. Similarly man is to be a yea- 

104 The Testament of John Davidson, pp. 17-19. 

105 Will to Power, II, 263. los Jhid., 889. 

106 761^., 243. ^09iMd., 889. 
^07 Ibid., 846. 110 76?^., 809. 



32 JOHN DAVIDSON 

sayer because all is matter and he should be proud of the fact that 
the entire universe is eager to become man. Finally man is to love 
the beauty and power of this world because there is no other world 
and such are the laws of matter. The chief reason why those ideas 
are adopted by Davidson is evidently because they harmonize with 
his own proclivities. As early as 1886, before he even heard of the 
name of Nietzsche, he already expressed a point of view approxi- 
mating the Nietzschean in his play Smith. For Nietzsche's criti- 
cism of ethics is not so much a philosophy as a persistent emotional 
mood. Many of the attitudes, usually described as Nietzschean, 
were assumed, though with less poignancy and consistency, by many 
minds who preceded Nietzsche. Davidson felt some of those moods 
himself; and formal Nietzschean thought merely intensified tend- 
^ encies that already possessed him. 
y It is thus out of his own emotional moods that Davidson con- 

structed his "new" poetry. If monism and certain ethical ideals 
did become with him a source of poetry it was only because they 
enriched his consciousness of life and thus served as an emotional 
cause. But such a condition could not be produced by a mere arbi- 
trary superimposition of a foreign system of thought on one's feel- 
ings.) Philosophy in a poet becomes a potent factor only when it 
augments preexistent emotional states. Such at least was evidently 
the case with John Davidson. Certain ideas with which he started 
out kept on returning in his works with a steady recurrence of 
waves ; each wave encroaching with greater volume of added thought 
a trifle further in the same direction. Those points of view gradu- 
ally became conscious processes with him; they gathered to them- 
selves sinews and flesh from various sources and at last became a 
systematic living whole ; and as such they influenced intimately and 
determined the character of his most important work. 

The significance of the realization that the primary origins of 
Davidson's ideas lie in a personal disposition of mind rather than 
in systems of thought offered by others becomes evident the moment 
one examines the relationship between his philosophy and his poetryJ 
They both have a common origin and are practically inseparable. A 
healthy mind assimilates indeed a great deal of material; but it 
selects and rejects new ideas and experiences on a basis of like and 
dislike. It culls those suggestions that harmonize with its own 



JOHN DAVIDSON 33 

ytendeneies and frequently constructs a system of thought that is 
>^ .really but an amplification of what it unconsciously felt before. 
Such at least seems to have been the process followed by Davidson 
in the development of his thought ; whence its intimate relationship 
with his growth as a poet. There is thus a distinct continuity of 
ideas prevailing throughout all his work. Philosophic concepts 
were to him at all times a source of emotional strength and were 
usually presented as emotional attitudes. Even in his earlier work, 
as has been noticed above, the chief source of his strength was the 
search for the meaning of life. ^ Since in his later poetry the 
greater keenness of thought in evidence was not a new current but 
an increase in the volume of a stream already flowing in his earlier 
work, there can be said to be no real change in the direction of 
thought or general characteristics of his poetry. His consciousness 
essentially metaphysical, invigorated by a thought that involved a 
general vision of the universe and a certain philosophic consistency, 
merely increased the intensity of his poetry. 1 This increase of in- 
tensity is, however, very significant. .Till Davidson created for him- 
self his materialistic philosophy he was, his theory of art for life's 
sake notwithstanding, a minor poet struggling vaguely though pas- 
sionately with a few modern situations and achieving a boat song 
in Scaramouch, a song or two in the eclogues, a few ballads sug- 
gestive of the turmoil of his age, and a few tender lyrics. In the 
main he was doing with slight variations, though with a sweetness 
and strength that was his own, what Henley and Kipling had 
already accomplished. He was a poet of ' ' empire ' ' verse ; of Lon- 
don poverty ; of the turbiilent elements of modern thought ; — with 
an intense love of life, and a passionate delicacy. Now, under the 
inspiration of an intenser thought, his former concepts broaden out 
and he becomes a nature poet in the Lucretian sense. He does not 
try to describe semi-literary moods aroused within him by the pres- 
ence of sea or sky nor does he attempt to construct an ideal nature 
out of bits of impressions of the real world. Instead he recreates 
in his Testaments objectively and philosophically the world and its 
processes. The thick turf becomes to him "Cream of the earth 
uprisen through fathomed depths of soil and sap. ' '^^^ The throstle 
in his verse delights ' * to tune his throat with tortured snails ' ' and 
111 The Testament of a Prime Minister, p. 49. 



L 



34 JOHN DAVIDSON 

murderous singing birds ''banquet sumptuously as nature bids.""^ 
The endless processes of nature become his theme : 



The green and sapphire earth embossed with studs 
Of crystal snow at either lonely pole; 
With orient dawn, with sunset in the west 
The sumptuous rubies of its girdle clasped; 
<1.^ And wearing gallantly, day in day out, 



yV 



Its azure mantle of ethereal dust, 
j^ That turns at night a sable domino 

^Xi With stars embroidered. us 

o r 

( Attempts at putting modern scientific thought into verse were 

made in half-hearted fashion in English poetry before Davidson. 
Tennyson's "move eastward happy earth" and his exactitude of 
scientific knowledge in "Break thou deep vase of chilling tears 
That grief has shaken into frost" had already startled an earlier 
generation of readers. James Thomson, and even Kobert Browning, 
likewise contribute their share in the poetic rendering of scientific 
ideas. But these touch the mere fringe. Davidson becomes ike 
poet par excellence of natural creation. The creative processes of 
nature become the chief source of his inspiration. He dwells in a 
palace in the skies and sings of ether "eternal, stretching taut in 
bourneless space, "^" "a sheer oblivious ecstacy"; of the wakening 
of the hungry lightning; of hydrogen's "first condensation of the 
infinite"; of passionate molecules swelling into "sumptuous neb- 
ulas"; of earth and neighboring worlds "shedding asteroids like 
a fiery sweat"; of "Earth delivered of its moon. And chilled with- 
out and tempered to endure Barbaric sculpture of the glacier. "^^^ 
Then he proceeds to sing of the sifting of the elements that become 
warp and woof of life ; of telluric history and of the deluge of fire, 

Compacture fierce and winnowing tides of air 
That forged and tempered and engraved the earth 
Enamelled it with sapphire seas and hung 
An emerald veil about its nakedness. 

He traces in fervent glow the origin of species: "sex from ether 
strained as lightning," embodied in protoplasm; life organical 

112 The Testament of an Empire Builder, p. 52. 

113 The Testament of a Prime Minister, p. 12. 

114 The Testament of John Bavidson 

115 The Testament of a Prime Minister, p. 96. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 35 

speeding through differentiation "into the rose, the oak tree and 
the wine and unto men and women"; the brain, "the goal Uncon- 
scious lightning aimed at when it led The onset of eternity to man. ' ' 
Finally he reveals the very birth of the Gods and narrates their 
gradual destruction; the death of our earth that shall reel to its 
doom "orbit-slipped" or 

The weight of ice amassed at either pole 
Shall change our axis till a deluge wipe 
The eitied world away.ne 

As a poet of Nature Davidson is far indeed from being alto- 
gether successful. Though he places the entire world on his can- 
vas and from a philosophic height judges everything that occurs 
within his ken, he cannot live long in the rare atmosphere of his 
heights. He fails to produce a single sustained effort in the manner 
of Lucretius. He expresses himself only fragmentarily in Testa- 
ments. Piecemeal he communicates that the world should rid itself 
of its past ;^^^ that man is made of the same substance as the furthest 
stars and should therefore lustily enjoy the world and not be afraid 
of life or pain, "the growing labors of the universe" ;^^® and that 
the other world is at last to be destroyed.^^^ His visions of the proc- 
esses of nature are presented in the Testaments and Tragedies only 
incidentally and spasmodically. He sees clearly only the outer 
causes of phenomena in their general outlines : but his vision of the 
details into which infinity disintegrates itself is often blurred. The 
precision that one does find in his work is frequently purchased at 
the expense of his becoming rhetorical or even through his produc- 
ing mere prosaic catalogniing effects^^ His Hell is thus magnifi- 
cently terrible in its general conception : he understands its suffer- 
ing and interprets it with a tragic irony by making the "winnow- 
ing" space between Heaven and Hell mellow 

the shriek of women and the roar 
Of men into immortal harmony.120 

But when he comes to depict details, he offers an enumeration that 
lis Ibid., p. 24. 

117 The Testament of a Man Forbid. 
lis Testaments. 

119 Testament of John Davidson. 

120 Testament of an Empire Builder, p. 75. 



36 ' JOHN DAVIDSON 

is indeed impressive enough because of its sheer accumulative force, 
but yet resolves itself into mere rhetoric largely because the poet is 
perhaps in too great haste to deliver his message rather than sustain 
his imaginative powers by feeling intensely the details he visualizes. 
His poetry thus even in its highest moods frequently turns into vio-"^ 
lent rhapsody. This rhetorical quality is usually however the re- 
sult of impatience rather than limitation of poetic powers and 
perturbs but slightly the general impression. In moments of 
calmer inspiration, Davidson's poetry has a grandeur of vision in 
the presence of which shrivels even Tennyson^. V ambrosial air" 
that rolls "from the gorgeous gloom of evening" driving fancy 
"from belt to belt of crimson seas." ^Davidson's agonies of star 
dust fill the mind with a keener sense of everlastingness. His 
ability to view nature as a complete process disintegrating itself 
into mountains, oceans, flowers and men, works subtle magic into 
scenes conceived even on a smaller scale. The very declivities ' ' that 
creep Unhonored to the ocean's shifting verge" communicate a 
feeling of suppressed energy due to a subconsciousness that the poet 
is aware that soon the willing earth will * ' leap to the bosom of the 
sun to be Pure flame once mora in a new time begun. "^^^ Purged 
by this pure flame, a dignity of mood and restrained melancholy of 
thought permeates his work. The very deformities of men and 
women that he describes with startling energy cease to be ugly 
sickening details : they are sublimated into processes of nature. In 
the height of his vision there is no room for meaningless details or 
mawkishness of sentiment. His images become gaunt, exact, in- 
tense, honest. His largeness of conception is, moreover, uttered in 
a rhythm of blank verse that rises to the occasion and contains a 
dignity and sweep that is Miltonic. ; 

The same grandeur of the scale of vision makes possible the con- 
struction of his later tragedies that are attempts at producing 
world-dramas in which the significance of materialistic thought is 
the theme. The limitations of those plays are likewise evident 
enough. They are largely polemics in dramatic form; for David- 
son does not start out with definite conceptions of characters or 
dramatic situations that are to be fitted into a general scheme but 
deliberately composes characters and situations in order to convey 

121 The Testament of a Man Forbid, p. 29. 



A 



JOHN DAVIDSON 37 

through them certain ideas. In The Theatocrat the whole play thus 
resolves itself into message. Characters who hear the Davidsonian 
gospel are at once convinced; for the doctrine of materialism is 
''not to be apprehended but to be felt." Thus no serious attempt 
is made by Davidson in the play to reveal the process of character 
transformation or to trace rigorously the effects that this trans- 
formation produces on individual conduct. The most effective parts 
of the tragedy are those that contain an exposition of materialism 
and that attempt to appreciate the significance of religion as a cul- 
tural factor in the world's civilization. Davidson realizes clearly 
that all culture is based on some form of religion. He understands 
that the opposition to God will be fought by wom^n ''with babes at 
their breast" to the last drop of blood. All that have suffered — 
those whose children and lovers are dead — will rise to defend the 
other world.^-^ It requires therefore great courage "to bid the 
dream avaunt once and forever. ' ' But though wars and convulsions 
will follow, the great truth must out ; and the world will be thrilled 
with the splendor and terror of seeing itself without symbols. For 
in itself the universe is " a becoming, a passion and a pain, A rapt 
imagination. ' ' Davidson therefore hurls himself in passionate fury 
against the world, producing however as a result, not "a drama of 
church and state" but a rhetorical polemic containing here and 
there a few impressive rhapsodical visions. 

The same limitations are evident in the uncompleted trilogy of 
God and Mammon in which he takes his task of producing a world 
drama even more seriously. His theme becomes definitely the diffi- 
culty of converting the world to a pure materialism and he tries to 
deal directly with the various existing forces of the present society. 
Prince Mammon slays his father, kills his brother, crowns himself 
king of Thule and marries Gwendolen. After delivering his coro- 
nation speech he quells a riot with machine guns. He is now ready 
to spread his message : and the harlots become indignant when they 
are informed that they have no souls. He informs the paupers that 
they must die ; for he will have no poor, no incurables, no criminals 
and no bedlamites. There is moreover no longer to be the cult of 
age; youth should rule unburdened by a knowledge of the past. 
The abbot Gottlieb is tortured on the rack, for "to do the things One 
122 The Theatocrat, p. 195. 



38 JOHN DAvrosoN 

fears to do is the first law of nature." The abbey is burned, *'for 
it enshrines a lie " and all the beauty that came with Christianity — 
books, buildings, pictures, and the hearts of men must be annihi- 
lated. Money likewise must be abolished: "Churches and Banks 
together stand and fall." Such are some of the things achieved 
by Mammon who through his message ' ' transcends all dishonor and 
all crimes and the utmost evil he could do. " 

The conversion to the faith is however far from perfect. The 
soldiers of matter enlisted in Mammon's cause cry "God save the 
King." Mammon himself suffers from lapses of conscience and 
"sees" the murdered bodies of his father and brother. None of 
his followers has the courage fully to accept the significance of 
his gospel. Oswald "loves and serves in fear and wonder" — ^but 
the torturing of Gottlieb on the rack, the burning of the abbey, and 
the betrayal of his affection for Inga finally drive him away to 
Mammon's enemies. Gwendolen "adores" him; but Mammon 
realizes that once her passion will cloy she too will desert him. 
Florimond follows him half in fear : in the presence of death he too 
becomes afraid of God and judgment. Indeed conditions are fast 
forming that would have enabled Davidson to show in the third 
part of the trilogy, that was never written, how Mammon eventu- 
ally succeeded in ' ' transcending the utmost evil that could be done 
to him." In spite of this seeming failure Mammon ruthlessly 
proceeds on his way to change the world. He muzzles the press 
and even suppresses all display of humor in order to accomplish 
his purpose. 

The scale of this uncompleted trilogy is indeed titanic: its de- 
tails are however sketched rather than clearly visualized. All the 
characters, with the exception of Mammon, are mere symbols of 
ideals that prevail in modern society — inceptors of Teutonic re- 
ligion, neo-pagans, socialists, reformers, thieves, beggars, harlots, 
mobs. These symbols are not treated either lyrically or dramat- 
ically. They say indeed things consistent with the ideals they are 
created to represent; but Davidson has no sympathy to waste on 
them, whence the mechanical effect they produce. He does not 
create a single foe worthy of Mammon's steel because Davidson is 
evidently intoxicated with the joy of relating Mammon's message. 
The character of Mammon is limned however with bold precision. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 39 

He is heartless because universal. A true force, he does not calcu- 
late, and assimilates things as they come along, making them serve 
his purpose. The boldness of conception back of such character 
creation is imposing. The limitations in the complete realization 
of the character are largely a result of the enormous difficulties 
confronting Davidson in his conception of life, f 

He tried to conceive in his plays human conduct based on a new 
system of ethics. Poetry is usually informed by the ethics of the 
age in which it is produced. The penitence, resignation and wist- 
fulness of Cynewulf, the very defects of his constructive style, are 
thus related to the scholastic thought of his time. Back of the Caro- 
line poetry are the monarchic politics of Hobbes, his agnosticism 
and, above all, his materialistic metaphysics blended with the 
Epicurianism of Gassendi and the skepticism of Montaigne. Simi- 
larly the crude empiricism of the prosaic realism of the eighteenth 
century novelists, the optimism of an Addison, and the deism of a 
Pope, are related to Locke, Leibnitz, and Berkeley. With the change 
of moral conceptions a poetry containing new motives might of 
course be created, without such change precluding the possibility of 
the production of poetry celebrating the obsequies of ethical ideals 
of a previous age. But whether the old or new morality is em- 
ployed, the poet must in either case make the reader sympathize 
with the given ethics : else the tragedy or comedy so created would 

. become meaningless. One need not become a Platonist in order to 

/ appreciate Wordsworth's Ode on Intimations of Immortality; fre- 
quently a poem exerts its most artful charm when one feels that the 
thought which lies back of it is part of a faith that is dead ; but even 
in such cases the poem will not move unless the reader can be made 
to sympathize with the mood that evoked the particular thought 
that one fails to accept. The task confronting a poet building on an 
obsolescent system of ethics or on one prevailing in a given age is 
comparatively simple. There is no difficulty on the part of the 
reader to whom the poet appeals in understanding the emotional 
significance of the moral standards employed. The poet who com- 
poses on the basis of an ethical system that is strange to most of his 
contemporaries must however either take it for granted that his 
readers are of the few who have already attained the new point of 
view and proceed calmly with his work ; or, if he wants to appeal to 



40 JOHN DAVIDSON 

a wider circle, he must pause to denounce the past and make of the new 
standards the center of the emotional crisis of his character. If he 
follows the latter alternative he becomes either a propagandist and 
mars his play or else he must sacrifice the natural construction of 
the drama in order to make out of every significant detail of the 
new ethics an emotional crisis. Great artists have indeed circum- 
vented such difficulties. Goethe has fashioned a Mephistopheles 
who is free of prevailing human tastes and Shakespeare has created 
an Ariel who is indifferent to human morality. But in the one 
case, Mephistopheles is a delightful villain for whom no sympathy 
is expected ; and in the other, Ariel is a disembodied spirit evoking 
sympathy because he is an airy creature free of mortal cares. The 
central characters in Faust and in The Tempest, indeed the whole 
of both plays, is moreover conceived on an ethics that requires no 
formal exposition to be generally understood. But when in the 
midst of a world in which conscience, repentance, and pity are con- 
ceived as virtues a dramatist tries to construct a play fundamentally 
based on ideas through which these virtues appear vices, his task be- 
comes artistically almost impossible. He might perhaps in a fashion 
write a novel based on such new standards ; for the dispersed charac- 
ter of the novel permits digressions necessary to evoke at least intel- 
lectual sympathy on the part of the reader for those new ethical 
aspects. But the very construction of the dramatic form practically 
precludes these digressions and thus the sympathetic understanding 
of his new ideas. When Davidson therefore proceeds to create 
dramas based on a new moral philosophy he either cannot make his 
characters live consistently in his ethical world without pausing to 
make lengthy explanations that interfere with the action of his 
characters, or he fails to make the readers sympathize or even be- 
lieve in the reality of the character's point of view. Largely for 
l/.-l these reasons, though Davidson conceives the details in his tragedies 

on a grand scale, his lyric and dramatic powers break down the 
moment he tries to express himself in dramatic form: He is com- 
pelled to digress and consequently he produces rhapsodies and 
rhetorical polemics rather than a Faust or a Peer Gynt. The result 
achieved is however at worst a brilliant failure that dazzles with 
the effulgency of its rhetoric, a rhetoric that is impressive because 
, of its passionate honesty and the daring of the ideas that it conveys. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 41 

Similarly impressive are Davidson's attempts at expressing 
himself at the close of his poetic career in lyric poems, ballads, and 
dramatic monologues. These briefer poems are artistically more 
successful than his plays because in them he can make a passionate 
plea for his ideas without the need of entering into digressions. 
The entire poem becomes from beginning to end a means of con- 
veying a single undivided mood. The very novelty of his philo- 
sophic point of view, moreover, gives an intensity to the moods and 
emotions that he elects to express. In Holiday and Other Poems 
and in Fleet Street and Other Poems Davidson is thus enabled to 
portray life effectively from the standpoint of the poet who en- 
throned himself above the galaxy and understands the entire uni- 
verse from a cosmic rather than human morality. The dominating 
tone in back of the Holiday volume is thus that it is good to be 
alive, for life is the reason why we are here. He furthermore an- 
nounces again and again that the biggest conceivable thing is that 
which tends to increase vitality, the sheer courage for courage's 
sake. With mind all aglow he accordingly sings the brave hunting 
song of the runnable stag 

Not to be caught, dead or alive, 
The stag, the runnable stag.123 

In the new eclogues ether and nebula seem to have lit his blood and 
he paints in the colors of the dawn. Daisies are to him the ''land 
wide Milky Way Of myriad eyes of day. "^-* November is "one 
wet crimson stain ' ' ;^-^ ' ' a crimson flood ' ' intoxicates the east ; and 
lilies are ''on fire with newly budded love." Life is to him, how- 
ever, not all blaze. From philosophic heights he can write at pleas- 
ure calmly of apple trees "heavy with apples And supremely con- 
tented"; for to them "Life is an effortless passion. "^^^ He can 
sing from his palace in the Milky Way of "London W.,"^^^ its mur- 
murs, cries and sunsets. All this he does with passionate intensity 
but not with violence. An occasional image in which daisies in the 
grass are likened to a "snowy leprosy "^-^ may occur; but the poet 
himself condemns it as a slander. His revel in brave colors and 
fiery images is sobered by his vision of the totality of the universe. 

123 Holiday and Other Poems, p. 19. 126 lUd., p. 30. 

i24 76r(?., p. 70. -^27 Ibid., p. 37. 

^25 Hid., p. 35. ^28 Hid., p. 71. 



42 JOHN DAVIDSON 

His poems lack however the freshness that some of his earlier work 
contained ; and the frequent use of Poe 's repetend in his versifica- 
tion certainly does not lend them any youthfulness. The repetend 
has indeed something elemental about it; for like parallelism it 
carries one back to the very beginning of poetry; but it savors of 
the simplicity of age rather than of youth. 

In Fleet Street mid Other Poems poetry is written from the same 
heights but it deals with the work-a-day world. It describes satir- 
ically the stupid mob in the "Crystal Palace" enjoying its holiday; 
the insufferable bores one meets on "Koad and Rail"; the com- 
placent forest folk; and the gutter merchants with their palsied 
souls and numbed affections. The drabness of the life of the rail- 
way stations seemingly enters his soul, and the hell of the unfit is 
lugged out for inspection. Davidson of the Fleet Street volume 
contemplates rather than feels the life that he sees. Accordingly 
he reasons, pleads, denounces, and expresses himself in parables 
that read like protestations of faith. This argumentative tone is 
seemingly partly the product of an apprehension that there be no 
one after him to feel intensely the full significance of the "mes- 
sage ' ' that he wanted to deliver to his contemporaries. He indeed 
exclaims in his Testament ; 

I dare not die, must not die: I am the sight 

And hearing of the infinite; in me 

Matter fulfills itself; before me none 

Beheld or heard, imagined, thought or felt; 

And though I make the mystery known to men. 

It may be none hereafter shall achieve 

The perfect purpose of eternity; 

It may be that the Universe attains 

Self-knowledge only once; and when I cease 

To see and hear, imagine, think and feel. 

The end may come, and matter, satisfied. 

Devolve once more through wantom change, and tides 

Of slow relapse, suns, systems, gallaxies, 

Back to ethereal oblivion, pure 

Accomplished darkness. Night immaculate 

Augmenting everlastingly into space. . . .129 

He is therefore determined to do almost anything in his power in 
order to express himself unmistakably and he writes accordingly 
129 Testament of John Davidson, p. 141. 



JOHN DAVIDSON 43 

satires and parables in the Fleet Street volume and explanatory 
prefaces, dedications and notes in his other works in order to sup- 
plement and interpret the thoughts expressed in his testaments, 
plays and briefer poems. 

This stupendous conception of his own value is with Davidson 
not so much an outgrowth of arrogance as of despair lest he may have 
lived his hard life in vain ; a sentiment tempered by a dread that soon 
he will be compelled "to turn aside and attempt things for which peo- 
ple will pay. ' ' When he is more hopeful the arrogant tone is trans- 
formed into a courage that slays every dejection and *'seeth the 
abyss but with the eagle 's eye. ' ' He remembers that even the most 
repulsive flesh is great because it dares to live. In the poem entitled 
Fleet Street this thought is brought out with special emphasis. The 
poet insists that Fleet Street with its noise, rapture and brick-work 
was once a silence in the ether. Perhaps in foul weather the 
patience of this brick-work gives out to the length of envying the 
"dazzling perdition" of Saturn's belts ; if so, let the bricks be coura- 
geous and be proud of their telluric destinies; for they, too, are 
part of the cosmic whole. Moods of envy of each other's lots are 
bound to come but regular bricks "transcend them always." Simi- 
larly in his later eclogues the poet reflects that "harvests in winter's 
bosom sleep." This courageous tone is expressed most effectively 
in a poem like his epilogue to The Testament of John Davidson: 

I felt the world a-spinning on its nave, 
I felt it sheering blindly round the sun; 
I felt the time had come to find a grave: 
I knew it in my heart my days were done. 
I took my staff in hand; I took the road, 
And wandered out to seek my last abode. 

Hearts of gold and hearts of lead 

Sing it yet in sun and rain, 

" Heel and toe from dawn to dusk, 

Eound the world and home again. ' ' 



My feet are heavy now, but on I go, 
My head erect beneath the tragic years. 
The way is steep, but I would have it so; 
And dusty, but I lay the dust with tears, 
Though none can see me weep: alone I climb 
The rugged path that leads me out of time — 




44 JOHN DAVIDSON 

Out of time and out of all, 
Singing yet in sun and rain, 
' ' Heel and toe from dawn to dusk, 
Eound the world and home again." 

Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair 
That went before me still and made the pace. 
The earth is full of graves, and mine was there 
Before my life began, my resting place; 
And I shall find it out and with the dead 
Lie down for ever, all my sayings said — 

Deeds all done and songs all sung. 

While others chant in sun and rain, 

' ' Heel and toe from dawn to dusk, 

Eound the world and home again." 

In such a swan song he gave expression to the fullest compass of 
his emotions ; to a manliness, an ecstacy of metaphysical vision and 
a subdued tragic feeling aroused by his sense of eternity. It lacked 
but one significant quality that is to be found in many of his other 
poems : a genuine love of meadows and sky-larks, the tenderness and 
intimacy of which is heightened, particularly in his later work, by a 
violent passion for the productive elements of nature. 

Imperfect as these later lyric poems, testaments and tragedies 
are, they represent not merely his maturest thought but also his 
most significant work. He personally considered these later produc- 
tions as his greatest creations, and his opinion on the matter was 
/ unerring. That which he suggested unconsciously as a young man 
inThis poetry in Scotland, and passionately strove to attain in the 
poetry of his growing manhood in the eighteen nineties, he defi- 
nitely achieved in the full consciousness of his powers in his poems 
of the early twentieth century. In comparison with his more popu- 
lar poems of the preceding decade his later work thus reveals a 
greater depth of vision, and intenser emotion and a greater hold on 
the understanding of the essentials of life. His technical skill dis- 
plays a corresponding growth. He handles verse with more trium- 
phant effectiveness. Blank verse is not only to Davidson ''a su- 
preme relief of nervous tension, the fullest discharge of emotion, 
the greatest deliverance of energy, ' ' but it communicates at its best 
to the reader a feeling of everlastingness and supreme contentment 
that one associates only with the most powerful and most permanent 
poetry. His later poems, especially the tragedies, contain indeed 



JOHN DAVIDSON 45 

many lapses into rhetoric and even bombast; but this bombast is 
not the result of deterioration of poetic powers. With a poet on 
metaphysical themes an increase in maturity of thought rather leads 
to a keener feeling of life and to a corresponding increase of poetic 
strength. The rhetoric in Davidson's later poems is largely the 
effusion of a mind overflowing with the bigness of its theme. It 
contains no clever conceits and no starched images : it communicates 
a directness of sincere passion. Davidson himself must have been 
aware of the rodomontade qualities of occasional passages. He must 
have composed them with the carelessness of a mind overflowing 
with creative energy. They are probably the result of impatience 
on the part of the poet to convey an unfamiliar thought, or of a de- 
termination to pause and explain his new ethics. It should be 
realized that this very philosophy that was partly responsible for 
Davidson 's wildest rhapsodies and for prosaic catalogues of the ele- 
j ments, in moments of the calmer feelings was also the source of his 
I most triumphant poetical achievements. 

I A contrast between the poems of "London" in Ballads and 

k Songs and "London W. " in Holiday and Other Poems perhaps best 
illustrates the nature of the growth of Davidson as a thinker and 
poet. Both poems are unmistakably Davidsonian in their manner- 
isms. Clouds that "Like smouldering lilies" are unconsumed, and 
sunsets that * ' well like crimson founts ' ' might have been conceived 
hJby the poet in almost any period of his work. The London with its 
;' heart "beating warm" is, however, suggestive of Wordsworth's 
sonnet On Westminster Bridge and of the poetry on London com- 
posed in the eighteen nineties. Moreover a lyrical outcry like 

Oh sweetheart, see! how shadowy, 
Of some occult magician's rearing, 
Or swung in space of heaven 's grace 
Dissolving, dimly reappearing. 
Afloat upon ethereal tides 
St. Paul's above the city rides! 

though perfect in its way and delicately suggestive of the poet's 
mood, yet lacks the compactness and maturity of mind evident in a 
"London W," In that latter poem there is nothing imitative and 
the lyric emotion is stronger because it is a product of a mind 
capable of a loftier vision. In it Davidson brings out with greater 



46 JOHN DAVIDSON 

directness the murmurs, cries, smoke, and hunger of a great city. 
Davidson accomplishes in such a poem what impressionistic painters 
have already realized in paint. For back of a passage like 

Trees of winter 's nakedness aware 
Gleamed and disappeared like things afraid, 
Dryads of the terrace and the square, 
Silvery in the shadow and the shade, 

there is not merely a greater sensitiveness but a more direct feeling 
of open air. This directness is the product of a more intimate unity 
between the poet and the spirit of the scene that he describes. In 
the earlier poem Davidson merely portrays romantic emotions 
roused at the sight of London. In the later poem there is a firmer 
grasp of details and consequently a greater directness of emotion 
that are probably due to the poet's comprehending philosophically 
the unity of life. The poet's point of view, chastened by a philo- 
sophic understanding of natural processes, enables him to realize 
the ultimate significance of the details that he employs and he can 
thus communicate more intimately the spirit of the landscape that 
he portrays. Whether Davidson's philosophic attitudes really in- 
tensify his lyric powers precisely in this manner is of course a 
matter of speculation. Whatever the causes or processes may be, 
there can be but little doubt, however, that his later works are not 
only more philosophical in theme and in point of view but also dis- 
play a greater compactness of lyrical expression and a profounder 
emotion. 

Davidson recommends to the critic that he take out into the 
open that which seems to him poetry and thus discover whether it 
can bear daylight and experience of life. Davidson's own poems 
in the presence of mountains and fields do not lose in their genuine- 
ness. They can stand the test with which he proves others. Their 
effectiveness depends moreover not only on genuineness of feeling 
but on breadth of vision. Davidson had a mind that was essen- 
tially metaphysical ; whence much of his poetry is full of a dignity 
that is sublime. Because the moods in most of his songs spring 
^rom a philosophic vision they not merely allure; they stimulate. 
V His philosophy may be wrong but the emotion that it arouses is 
^ genuine and has a meaning to all who face things. If materialism 
is wrong, some other process is right; in either case the impending 
agonies of stars, the viewing of the world from an eternal aspect, 



JOHN DAVIDSON 47 

cannot lose meaning. There may be another world ; and the soul, 
in spite of Davidson, may be immortal; but Davidson's amor fati, 
his determination to live bravely, are bound to have meaning as 

\ long as courage means anything to the human mind. 

It is a simple matter to enumerate Davidson's limitations; for 

; he tried to create in his later works the well-nigh impossible: a 
poetry based on an ethics that was new and almost meaningless to 
his generation. Staggering under such stupendous attempt, his 
mind was evidently in a continuous state of tension and was im- 
pelled by a desire of propaganda that was unfortunately not rele- 
gated to prefaces and epilogues. Goaded on by a lust for dissemi- 
nation of doctrine and by a passion for scientific detail he fre- 
quently became prosaic or rhapsodic. His very satiric powers, in 
spite of an intense moral passion, thus became impaired. He more- 
over lacked the power of sustained thought and naturally sought 
expression in forms that are loose. He did not elaborate his poetic 
ideas patiently but turbulently burst forth again and again with 
a passion that overpowered the mind and the imagination but 
failed to hold them altogether prisoner. He could interpret well 
perhaps only one human passion — the search for truth. Finally 
from the standpoint of thought value — the quality that to him was 
most significant — ^his poetry was largely a record of failure to 

' solve the great problems that tortured him throughout life. In 
his "pleasures of youth" he thus insisted that love is the secret 
of the world — a thought that survived in a modified form to the 
very end. His attitude towards love was semi-metaphysical from 
the outset. Even in his early poems love was conceived not as 
a touch of finger tips nor as a wanton lust but as an ecstasy of 
creative desire. She later became his mate and joyously journeyed 
with him ' ' Right into the heart of the sun On the morning or even- 
ing tide. ' ' But love failed to explain his universe ; for the world 's 
suffering gripped him — a ghost that he never laid. "With pride he 
asserted in earlier days that a man is what he makes himself; yet 
the feeling that man can make himself only at the cost of suffering 
to others gnawed his conscience. Even after he had accepted in 
his later philosophy the seemingly inevitable by asserting that suf- 
fering — the whining of the rotting match girl — was the growing 
pains of the world that should not daunt, he still partly felt that 
he was evading an issue. Then the significance of sin, denial, and 



48 JOHN DAVIDSON 

the glory of the world demanded solution; and he finally evolved 
through his own thinking and reading a system that served him as 
an explanation. This system of materialism was based on moods 
rather than on well-reasoned scientific or philosophic thought. It 
indeed satisfied, no matter whether right or wrong, his imagina- 
tion and gave to his poetry consistency of thought, grandeur of 
vision and intensity of form. It did not however enable him to 
create a new poetry in the sense that he conceived it. He only 
talked of a new pathos; but he really did not create it. His 
poetry was new only in the sense that all original poetry is new. 
It did not offer a statement of the naked world freed of all 
symbols and of all traditions, but rather expressed Davidson's 
particular moods — lofty, passionate and philosophic. But though 
his poetry was not "a new poetry for the first time in a thou- 
sand years" yet Davidson's significance is none the less great. His 
very failures communicate a sense of power. As a thinker he helped 
to stem artistic pose and unimaginative naturalism and through 
the invigorating robustness of his poems gave direction to the new 
movements in English poetry. Though his own work is not free 
from the tangle of rhetorical verbiage, yet his insistence on the 
need of genuineness of thought and emotion helped to clear the air 
of a great deal of imitativeness. His attacks on matter-of-fact real- 
ism and his endeavors to create poetry on a basis that harmonized 
with what he thought was the most permanent in the temper of 
his own time were healthy seminal tendencies of a big mind. Fi- 
nally he has created some of the most daring ballads and lyrical 
poems of the late nineteenth century full of a tenderness and 
earthiness and passionate thought that are peculiarly his own. His 
semi-dramatic poems contain an exaltation, a rush of power, and a 
largeness of utterance that thrill with their vastness. His poetry 
on cosmology, full of fervor and grandeur of vision, undoubtedly 
occupies a unique position in English literature. He falls indeed 
short of the greatest. He saw however visions of great things and 
his failures are due to his not resting satisfied with anything short 
of eternity. The contributions that he offered to English literature 
are therefore living poetry and his memory will remain significant 
to all to whom daring of thought and genuineness of poetic feeling 
are precious. 
August, 1914 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



An Unhistorical Pastoral, 1877 (printed Greenock, 89). 

A Eomantic Farce, 1878 (printed Greenock, 89). , . . 

Bruce: A Drama ("A Chronicle Play"), 1884, Glasgow (printed 

1886, Glasgow). ^ . ^ / ■ ^ a 

Smith: A Tragedy C'A Tragic Farce"), 1886, Crieff (printed 

1888, Glasgow) . ^ ^ . . ^ iqqq 

Scaramouch in Naxos: A Pantomime, 1888, Crieff (printed 1889, 

Greenock). 
In a Music Hall, 1872-89 (printed 1891, London). 
The North Wall (A Practical Novelist) (printed 1885, Glasgow}. 
Perfervid (printed 1890, London). 

The Great Men (printed 1891, London). , . ^ ^ .^oon 

Laura Ruthven's Widowhood (with J. C. Wills) (printed 1892). 
Montesquieu's Lettres Persennes, (tr.) 1892 (printed 1892). 
Paragraphs and Sentences (printed 1893). 
Miss Armstrong's and Other Circumstances. 
Fleet Street Eclogues (printed 1893, London). 
Baptist Lake (printed 1894, London). 

A Random Itinerary (printed 1894, London). 

Ballads and Songs (printed 1894, London). 

Earl Lavender (printed 1895). 

Second Series of Fleet Street Eclogues (printed 1895) 

PourLaCouronne (Coppee), (tr.) 1896 (printed 1896). 

New Ballads (printed 1896). 

The Last Ballad and Other Poems (printed 1898). 
^' Godfrida- A Play in Four Acts (printed 1898). 
J Self's the Man: A Tragi-Comedy (completed Sept., 1899) (prmted 

The Knight of the Maypole: A Comedy in Four Acts (written 
1900) (printed 1903). ,, 

. A Queen's Romance-a Version of Victor Hugo's -Ruy Bias 
written for Lewis Waller (1901) (printed 1904). 

49 



50 JOHN DAVIDSON 

Testaments by John Davidson : No. I, The Testament of a Viviseetor 

(printed 1901). 
Testaments by John Davidson: No. II, The Testament of a Man 

Forbid (printed 1901). 
Testaments by John Davidson : No. Ill, The Testament of an Em- 
pire Builder (printed 1902). 
A Rosary (printed 1903). 

The Testament of a Prime Minister (printed 1904). 
Selected Poems (printed 1904). 
"\' The Theatocrat: A Tragic Play for Church and Stage (printed 

1905). 
Holiday and Other Poems with a Note on Poetry (printed 1906). 
God and Mammon — A Trilogy: The Triumph of Mammon with a 

personal note by way of epilogue (printed 1907). 
God and Mammon — A Trilogy: Mammon and His Message, being 

the second part of God and Mammon (printed 1908). 
The Testament of John Davidson (printed 1908). 
Fleet Street and Other Poems (composed 1908-9) (printed 1909). 
The Man Forbid and Other Essays (ed. by Edward J. O'Brien), 

composed 1892( ?)-1902( ?) (printed 1910). 



Biographical Sources 

\ Davidson earnestly requested in his last will the destruction of 
his letters and forbade the writing of his life. There are conse- 
quently no biographical notices worth mentioning. The biographical 
details offered in the Dictionary of National Biography and in the 
eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica are seemingly re- 
writings of the scant information to be found in "Who is Who." 
In Bookman, I, p. 85, a brief interview with Davidson is pub- 
lished. Accounts of his tragic end are to be found in the English 
Daily Press of March the 27th, 30th; April 1st, 19th; September 
20th-22d, 1909. Several of the earlier poems are semi-autobi- 
ographical. His entire works contain a revelation of the most sig- 
nificant elements of his personality written large. - 



JOHN DAVIDSON 61 

c 

Critical Books and Articles 

Archer, "W. — Poets of the Younger Generation (1902). 

Chapman, E. M. — English Literature in Account with Religion, pp. 

479-85. 
Bronner, Milton — A Poet of Anarchy (Forum, 44: 305-20). 
Gates, L. E. — Studies and Appreciations (1900), pp. 177-82. 
Jackson, Holbrook — The Eighteen Nineties (1913). 
Kenedy, J. M.— English Literature, 1880-1905 (1912). 
Murdoch, W. B. — The Renaissance of the Eighteen Nineties. 
O'Brien, Edward J. — Introduction in The Man Forbid and Other 

Essays (1910). 
Quiller-Couch, A. T. — Adventures in Criticism (1896). 
Schelling, Felix E.— The English Lyric (1913), pp. 278-9. 
Walker, H. — The Literature of the Victorian Era (1910). 
Young, Filsom— The New Poetry Fortn., 91 : 136-52. 



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